Passenger sees Boeing 757-200 “wing coming apart” mid-air — United flight from San Francisco to Boston makes emergency landing in Denver::A United Airlines flight to Boston was diverted to Denver because of an issue with the plane’s wing.
This occurred on a 29 year old plane. This is almost certainly just a one-off issue. Unless it starts happening frequently with other 757s, it’s nothing to be overly concerned about. And in that case, the NTSB would figure out why it’s happening and issue a directive.
Planes are designed on a “Swiss cheese” model. Swiss cheese (as Americans call any variety resembling Emmental) is full of holes, but you can’t usually see all the way through a block of it. On a plane, something might fail and you can’t always prevent that, but you can make sure that there is enough redundancy that if something does go wrong you’re still covered. For something to cause a plane to crash, the “holes” have to line up so something could pass all the way through the “cheese.”
This “one-off” issue was spotted on dozens of 737s.
This issue with a damaged wing slat on this particular 29-year-old 757 was spotted on dozens of 737s? Do you have a source for that?
Unless you’re confusing this with the 737 MAX 9 door plug issue. That is not a one-off, that is a manufacturing/assembly issue. And that’s my point. The door plug situation is a systemic problem on many brand new planes, whereas this story is about a relatively small issue on a 29-year-old plane.
Something being damaged on a 757 shouldn’t shake people’s confidence in Boeing. Shit going wrong in the design and manufacturing of the 737 MAX series should.
