Aloha Airlines Flight 243
Introduction
Aloha Airlines Flight 243 was a flight from the islands of Hilo to Honolulu carrying 95 people. Part of the roof of the 737 blew off resulting in the death of one person, Clarabelle Lansing, who was a flight attendant serving drinks.
Pilots
Captain Robert Schornstheimer, 44, and First Officer Madeline Tompkins, 36, were pilots on the flight, and they managed to land the plane at nearby Kahului International Airport.
The Incident
The flight took off from Hilo International at 13:25 HST and began as normal. However, 23 minutes into the flight, part of the fuselage flew off. A flight attendant who was serving drinks was sucked out, and was the only person to die in this incident. The other passengers were strapped into their seats, and so they did not get sucked out. The whistling sound of the wind filled the cabin, and the plane began to roll back and forth.
The Captain immediately took the controls, and began to make an emergency descent to a lower altitude and find a nearby airport to land at. He opted to continue flying to Kahului instead of flying back to Hilo. During the decent, the plane suffered an engine failure, and the flight crew didn’t know if their nose landing gear had properly come down. Nonetheless, they were able to land the plane on Runway 2 of Kahului International Airport as if nothing had happened. Passengers were soon evacuated, and news reporters and ambulances soon arrived on the scene. This is because the roof of a plane flying off is a rare occurrence, and already people wanted to know why it had done so.
Investigation Results
It was soon found that metal fatigue was the main culprit for the accident, and that the Aloha Airlines maintenance team failed to spot and fix this fatigue. After this was found, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) ordered that old planes would be investigated, as an accident similar to this could occur but could kill many more. But of course, they missed some planes.
