Boeing was warned: Evacuation slides have fallen from planes for several years
Boeing and airlines were warned by the feds four years ago about evacuation slides unexpectedly deploying from airplanes — long before a massive plane slide landed on a Milton front yard on Sunday.
The Federal Aviation Administration proposed safety changes to Boeing 767s in a 2015 “airworthiness directive,” citing “multiple reports of uncommanded escape slide inflation … during normal airplane maintenance or operation.” But news reports indicate that incidents continued.
“This was an accident waiting to happen,” said Milton resident Cindy Christiansen, noting FAA alerts for Boeing slide problems over the years. “They’ve known about this for a long time.
“With more and more flights over us now, it really increases the chance of a rare event like this happening,” added Christiansen, who’s a member of the BOS Fair Skies Coalition.
On Sunday, a 6-foot silver-colored evacuation slide from a Delta plane landed on an Adams Street yard in Milton. The slide came from the wing of a Boeing 767 traveling from Paris to Boston’s Logan International Airport.
No one was struck by the slide.
“We dodged a bullet,” said Milton Select Board Chair Michael Zullas. “We’re thankful no one was injured.”
Zullas added that he’s “angry and a lot of people in Milton are angry. This is the second time in 10 years that something fell out of the sky over Milton.”
In 2010, the body of a 16-year-old stowaway who had hidden in an airliner’s wheel well fell into a Milton neighborhood when the landing gear was lowered on the approach to Logan
“Our community and many communities are suffering under the incessant noise and pollution created by these super highways in the sky,” Zullas said. “The FAA needs to be held accountable and for once provide answers and remedies.”
The FAA said it does not keep statistics on parts falling from aircraft “because it happens so rarely.”
“We investigate each incident thoroughly, and we work closely with air carriers to correct problems,” the FAA said in a statement. “If we find a systemic problem, we share that information with other operators to avoid future occurrences.”
In March 2016, an emergency slide dropped out of a Boeing 767 wing and hit a house near Phoenix, Arizona.
As with Sunday’s incident, that 2016 flight was on approach to Phoenix. The air flow changes over the wing when a plane descends, said professor Ed Coleman of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.
“As you slow down, that takes pressure off and a faulty latch can lift off,” Coleman said.
“I am very curious about what led to this,” he added. “It’s usually sealed pretty well in the wings.”
Delta said in a statement, “Our maintenance team is inspecting the aircraft; at this time we do not have any additional information.”
This Milton incident comes as Boeing is rocked by the ongoing grounding of its 737 Max planes following two crashes that killed 346 people.
Boeing declined to comment on Monday.
Christiansen hopes this near-miss incident reinforces the need for an inland airport away from heavily populated areas.
“You’ve got to get these planes away from all these people,” she said.
“What’s happening is there’s been more and more concern for safety on the plane, but not under the planes,” Christiansen said. “We need safety under the planes. What if this had been a catastrophe?”
— Herald wire services were used in this report.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/37ZEJP4
Post a Comment