Southwest Airlines (LUV) has found no problems with any other aircraft after a incident Monday afternoon prompted the airline to inspect its fleet of Boeing 737-300 planes.
The National Transportation Safety Board is helping Southwest investigate why a hole opened in the body of one of its planes on a flight late Monday afternoon.
Southwest Airlines flight 2294 was flying from Nashville, Tenn., to Baltimore, Md., when a 12-inch wide hole opened in the cabin of the Boeing (BA) 737-300 airliner.
Marilee McInnis, spokesperson for Southwest, told RTTNews that the airline immediately began inspecting 181 of their 737-300 planes after the incident and found no problems with the other aircraft.
"We've never had anything like this happen at Southwest before," McInnis said to RTTNews in a phone interview.
She added that the overnight investigations did not cause any delays and all of the planes are in service today.
The plane had to make an emergency landing in Charleston, W.Va. after the hole caused the plane to lose cabin pressure. None of the flight's 126 passengers and five crewmembers were injured.
The plane originally left Nashville at 4:05 p.m. local time and lost pressurization 30 minutes into the flight. The hole formed in the middle of the plane's cabin near the top of the aircraft.
In an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's "The Today Show," passenger Michael Cunningham said that he was sleeping when the hole opened.
"I dozed off, and next thing I knew, the loudest roar I had ever heard woke me up and people started to look up right above me seat," Cunningham said.
He added, "Everybody calmly looked up" through the hole before oxygen masks dropped down and the passengers put them on.
Boeing and the NTSB are helping Southwest investigate the incident to figure out why the hole opened in the airplane in mid-flight.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the jet was delivered in 1994 and is a generation behind Boeing's newer 737 planes. They have had problems in the past with cracks and are supposed to be inspected rigorously.
Southwest has come under fire recently for not conducting mandatory checks on 46 airplanes for fuselage cracks.
Last year, Southwest was fined $10.2 million by the U.S. government for not checking 46 of its 737s for cracks and other defects. The fine was reduced to $7.5 million by the FAA in March under the condition that Southwest would implement new safety measures.
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