We, human beings, are ever-learning creatures. We learn through trial and error, and every mistake we make presents opportunities to better ourselves. We make tweaks, adjustments, changes, new implementations etc. to make sure we do not repeat the same mistakes again. But some mistakes do come at a high cost, sometimes at a cost of people's lives.
Aloha airlines flight 243 was one of those incidents where it changed several aspects of the aviation industry such as safety standard, structural engineering, and crew training to name a few. On the afternoon of April 28, 1988, Aloha flight 243's cabin fuselage roof tore off and blew away while it was flying 24,000 feet up in the air. Miraculously, the pilots were able to land the damaged plane safely after 13 minutes of terror. Out of the 95 passengers that were on that flight, one death was reported with 65 suffering injuries.
During the investigation that followed, it was found that the probable cause of the accident was the failure of the Aloha Airlines management to supervise their maintenance and safety inspection crew properly. Aloha Airlines filed bankruptcy and it is out of commission now, but during its heyday, it was one of the leading airlines in Hawaii. The culture within the airlines was that they needed to make the flights between the Hawaiian islands as much as they could in order to stay in business. This led to their already ageing fleet to accumulate more than 35,000 flight hours with more than 89,000 flights from one island to another. Consequently, this led to maintenance and safety standards to achieve the bare minimum, just enough to satisfy FAA regulations in order to prevent as much ground time as they could. Because as we all know, airlines make money while their planes are in the air, not on ground. Flight 243 was the 2nd highest in number of operating hours.
There were many lessons to take away from this incident. Along with Aloha Airlines, FAA was heavily scrutinized for not enforcing stricter regulations and maintenance standards. President of the International Federation of Airworthiness stated, "the program wasn't good enough for what the aircraft was being asked to do, and the training wasn't quite enough for people to really spot what they should have spotted, and the culture was encouraging people to have the aircraft ready" (Flynn, 2023). This led to changes and implementations for more thorough bonding and corrosion control and prevention measures throughout the entire aviation industry. It also led to revamping on maintenance training and certification standards enforced by FAA. Additionally, Boeing revised its structural engineering to apply corrosion prevention materials between lap joints in an attempt to prevent similar incidents.
What baffled me was that all involved parties were already aware of the above-mentioned discrepancies but failed to act upon it. Yes, we are ever-learning creatures, but how many times do we have to wait for costly mistakes to be made before we seriously start making changes?
References:
Federal Aviation Administration. (1989, June 14). Human factors in aviation maintenance. Human Factors in Aviation Maintenance | Federal Aviation Administration. https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/maintenance_hf
Flynn, S. (2023, April 28). A woman was sucked out of a plane in Hawaii. it exposed flaws in the core of Aviation. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/aloha-airlines-flight-243-clarabelle-lansing-b2328174.html
Writers, S. (2018, April 27). Aloha 243: The accident that showed the danger of Ageing Aircraft. Flight Safety Australia. https://www.flightsafetyaustralia.com/2018/04/aloha-243-the-accident-that-showed-the-danger-of-ageing-aircraft/
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