Kevin Clarke was among the 165 passengers aboard the Boeing 757-200 on the flight Monday from San Francisco to Boston when the right wing appeared to start shredding.
The United flight from San Francisco to Boston had to be diverted to Denver after it was discovered mid-air a portion of the wing was damaged.
The Boeing 757-224 is a twin-engine, twin-jet aircraft operated by United Airlines. It has a cabin configuration of 16 business class seats, 42 economy comfort seats, and 118 economy seats.
A United flight from San Francisco to Boston had to be diverted to Denver after it was discovered mid-air a portion of the wing was damaged. Passenger Kevin Clarke took this video. What he says he saw before getting on the plane on @boston25 this morning. pic.twitter.com/0GIaOmS46t
— Kelly Sullivan (@ksullivannews) February 20, 2024
This Boeing airplane wing incident happens only weeks after a door plug fell out of a Boeing 737 while it was flying.
A Boeing 757 can fly with only one engine. Flying with one engine and significant wing damage would be very difficult.
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Look at those dents that were under the leading-edge slat!! Something heavy was dropped on that area or there was some other vertical impact with that area on the ground. Slats must have deformed but then sprung back to shape and not showed the internal damage that led to this failure and someone failed to recognise the significance of the wing dents while inspecting the plane for preflight.
The youngest 757 is 20 years old.
That’s a really strange fracture. It does look fatigue related in my worthless opinion. Fatigue failures propagate from manufacturing flaws usually.
[ from a hull/shape deformation analysis (with visual data input) one could get a convergence/estimation for energy transferred/size/mass of impacting object at defined velocities(?)
e.g. diagram from different study (small impacting area) about deformation(velocity) on aluminum (~~1/20″) (‘Measured deformation profiles in impact direction (a) aluminum–aluminum, (b) aluminum–steel, (c) steel–aluminum and (d) steel–steel’) ‘https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Behzad-Babaei-2/publication/251608005/figure/fig6/AS:298182497062944@1448103655712/Measured-deformation-profiles-in-impact-direction-a-aluminum-aluminum-b.png ‘
maybe ~1-3 parts ~2-5″(~~1*20″ length with lower density) and air foil profile deformation (behind slat) ~1/10-~~1/2″ ]
[ not to underestimate (rare) bird strike with gt ~5pounds (pigeon, seagull, duck ~2-3lb, heron), stork, crane, goose ~15lb, pelican, (falcon ~~2lb, record vertical diving speeds ~240mph(~390km/h) ~5kJ on impact), buzzard ~2-3lb, eagle ~20lb, albatros ~25lb), on birds migration there’s recommended AGL (altitude above ground level) to gt 2000ft
’https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nik-Petrinic/publication/267399919/figure/fig1/AS:295664316633089@1447503274671/Bird-strike-on-metallic-leading-edge-structure.png ’
lift-off speed 757 ~160mph(260km/h, ~70m/s, birds can avoid planes up to ~~25m/s)
kinetic energy of impacting ~1kg mass ~2500J (on runway speeds) or ~25000J at cruise speed
what’s ~100kJ energy for a midsized (rare) bird strike event, comparable to energy content of ~2-3g(?) of Jet-A1 (kerosene)
if there’s ~1″ dent on 1/2 cruise speed (7kJ, for each kg), that’s ~275kN,~27t (/kg) of force, or (with an impact area ~45sq”/~300cm2) ~9MPascal pressure (/kg) to deformation on 2024(?, yield strength ~270MPa, elongation ~10-15%) aluminum sheet (pure ~90MPa, alloys ultimate tensile strengths ~2×0-4×0-690MPa) (avg. thickness? varying from ~~”(0.050”) to over 1/2””), ~~1.3-12.7mm ]
Hiring people based on the color of their skin or other bull crap besides actual competency will inevitably end up in disaster. Literally putting lives at risk to virtue signal.
Which has exactly zero to do with a technical issue that arose from cost cutting recommendations from bean counters in corner offices.
Which has exactly zero to do with the present technical issue of taking cost cutting shortcuts by eliminating quality control positions. Bean counters. They never learn.
[ “They never learn”
Why? (within high standards of aeronautics businesses?)
More advanced tools (top sight camera? vibration location?) for technical safety control? ]
People. Boeing eliminated quality control positions. All the technology in the world won’t fix a problem if no one is reviewing the data.
Are you seriously going to blame this on that nonsense spewing from that guy’s mouth? The 757-200 has not been manufactured since 2004, you know, when Bush was the President. I looked up the tail number of this specific aircraft. This is N57111. It made its first flight on December 5, 1994, and was delivered to Continental Airlines on December 14, 1994. It’s had multiple owners.
You’d think when they started making fuselage out Little Debbie snack cakes, the planes would be indestructible. I mean, nothing damages those indigestible suckers – certainly not my G.I. tract, nuclear war, cockroachs or time itself.
I guess the cost-cutters will have to hit the drawing board again.
Boing switched from making planes to making money, – this inevitable ruins a company.
Ha, ‘Boing’, was the term British comedian Benny Hill used in a skit when talking about the airplane company and how their planes flew in relation to the ground.
Oh damn, people, I’m about to retire early and I got a lot of things I wanna go see. Between Pandemics and wars, this is already getting complicated. Now we got to worry (a lot more) about the planes falling apart?
Plane crash is about as good as it gets, as far as ways to go. It’s quick, and whoever survives you is a millionaire (settlement).
It truly is amazing how these planes cost $200M/ea+. Economies of scale with high reliability makes big expensive things like planes and reactors into a presumably profitable ventures.