B738 'pickle fork' crack sees aircraft withdrawn

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esseeeayeenn said:
Virgin has 75 737s. Only 19 are the next gen aircraft potentially affected.
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All 80 Virgin 737s are next gen, as are all 75 Qantas.
It's just that only 19 Virgin and I think 33 Qantas are over the 22k cycles mandated by the FAA for checks within the next 1000 (or 5-6 months)

I suspect a check of younger aircrafts pickle forks will be added as part of regular maintenance.

Southwest number now at 3, and looks like Korean had a lot of high cycle aircraft - all 9 were over 30k
www.reuters.com

Qantas, Southwest step up checks of Boeing 737 NGs after more cracks found

Qantas Airways Ltd <QAN.AX> and Southwest Airlines Co <LUV.N> are stepping up checks for structural cracks on Boeing Co <BA.N> 737 NGs after discovering problems with planes that did not require urgent inspections, airline sources said.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
moa999 said:
Once again Purvinas doing a great job of trying to scare and disrupt the travelling public.

Why not... Our members recognise this might be scary to the travelling public and our engineers will be working as quickly as they can to inspect the remaining aircraft
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He's the ultimate one eyed monster! Even the ALP rejected him.
 
There were always bound to be some affected. QF has done the right thing, and instead of waiting as the AD would have allowed, has checked all of the aircraft quickly. They now know that a couple are affected, and they won’t be carrying passengers until repaired. From looking at that group of 34 aircraft, they would also be pretty certain of the state of the others, unaffected by the AD. There’s no doubt that a check will be part of their recurrent maintenance from now on.

Calls for grounding of the aircraft, are just plain silly.

The only aircraft that don’t have cracks are ones that haven’t been built yet.
 
jb747 said:
Calls for grounding of the aircraft, are just plain silly.
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Indeed plain silly. However, grounding the fleet would have created a lot of overtime pay for the engineers required to undertake the inspections and sign-off the aircraft as fit to operate and return to service. So which group would stand to benefit from such an action [rhetorical question].
 
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Reminds me of the story of Chicken Little? ;)
 
This latest article (from 1811 hours on Thursday 31 October) is confusing as it states that Boeing has to deliver parts to Australia with Qantas engineers then in Brisbane having to attempt to remove the pickle fork frame:

www.brisbanetimes.com.au

Qantas short on aircraft for weeks due to 'pickle fork' cracks

Qantas will be short of domestic aircraft for several weeks as it waits on Boeing to repair structural cracks on at least two of its Boeing 737s, which make up the backbone of its short-haul operations.
www.brisbanetimes.com.au www.brisbanetimes.com.au

This is at odds with the discussion above about 'repair lines' being established elsewhere and what I'd thought (obviously incorrectly) would be QF (despite the admitted problem) flying the aircraft to USA for repairs.

This latest article implies that the aircraft cannot now be flown anywhere until repaired (although QF says Boeing has said an aircraft typically has '1000 (further) flights that it can operate.'

The article does not answer how if there are only spare parts totalling 25 pickle forks and at least 38 aircraft worldwide identified as having the problem, why QF would receive new parts ahead of other airlines.

For the vast majority of AFFers, including me, who are not engineers this situation throws up more questions in a sort of Mark Latham-like conga line. Answer one, and another comes to mind. Very complex.
 
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The articles about pickle forks have been the most read today on 'The Age' website.

Very poorly handled by QF, which appears to be so complacent it didn't realise to counter the assertions about two aircraft, not just one, (apparently confirmed by a source independent of the union) it should have brought out its CEO, or if he was not in Australia, on leave or otherwise unavailable, the next in charge.

One doesn't successfully counter adverse publicity by ostrich-like behaviour.

Prospective passengers may have short memories but they don't want to associate an airline brand name with the word 'unsafe'. There's always a cohort scared of flying full stop. One such public figure was former Liberal Premier of Victoria The Hon Jeff Kennett, no shrinking violet in other areas.
 
So the hosties won't be able to extract a pickle to place on the NP inspired toasted-sandwich in business class, hardly the end of the world!
 
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