The Nation : Inner Crack Held Cause of Tear in Plane

The fuselage of an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 jetliner ripped open earlier this week because of a crack in an inner layer of aluminum, Eastern executives said. The preliminary finding prompted the airline to develop a new procedure to test other Boeing 727 aircraft, said Ed Upton, Eastern vice president of maintenance and engineering. Typically, cracks develop on the outside of the fuselage, executives said. The tests were expected to begin immediately in Miami on the first of 46 Boeing 727s. Eastern workers will use a low-frequency beam of electrons to check for cracks in the aircraft’s lap joints, where two layers of aluminum overlap. Upton said the crack that developed in the Boeing 727, which was forced to make an emergency landing in Charleston, W. Va., would not have been visible to the naked eye. The National Transportation Safety Board is conducting a separate investigation and has yet to say what it believes caused the tear in the aircraft.