737 s skin, joints wear surprises Boeing

A Southwest Airlines passenger jet prepares to Tuesday.The company thought cracks in the Chicago Midway Airport would later land in a level displayed LifespanEngineer: it is "unfortunate that we accelerate our plans" Boeing says 175 aircraft worldwide are affected by service bulletin

Washington (CNN) - flight engineers aluminium skin and "lap joints" on certain Boeing 737 s need for cracks after about 60,000 start and landing cycles are controlled, but the company dramatically changed that the hull breach on a Southwest Airlines had expected estimate during flight with only 39,000 cycles.

Boeing this week gave an advice of similar aircraft, the aircraft operators for surface skin cracks only 30,000 cycles to check for.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday appointed the former inspections and it took a step further, ordering the inspections are that each 500 then at least to the cause of the April cycles can be established 1 break.

In a conference call with reporters Boeing engineer said Paul Richter, the company long ago recognized cracks as a problem in the lower line of the connection element has holes on the skin, but believed that the cracks would appear life much later in the aircraft.

"We expect that it would need to check in the time the aircraft at any given time." "Our plan before this event was recommend inspections from 60 000 cycles, which was a very conservative number," said judge.

"Of course none of the aircraft... are close to this threshold... so I would say that it is a pity, that we based our plans for inspections recommend to an event like this to speed up."

Pilot said aircraft cabin pressure

Judge the FAA characterized mandate of the frequent repetition of inspections as treading carefully, which may change the FAA, as soon as it the nature of the problem fully understand.

Boeing said 175 aircraft worldwide are affected by the service bulletin, and finally a total 570 aircraft have the same controls as they reach the 30,000 cycle threshold.

It was unclear Tuesday to US airlines include as many of the 570 aircraft.

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