The airlines famous for painting a whale on the side of one of its Boeing 737s has taken the idea one step too far? Also: Air France to receive next A380
Southwest Airlines, one of the biggest airlines in the United States (mainly a domestic carrier using Boeing 737 models), is the latest airlines to have a mid-air emergency. The Boeing 737 flying from Nashville, Tennessee to Baltimore Washington had to make an emergency landing in Charleston, West Virginia, after a 30 centimetre hole opened up in the roof of the aircraft.
The hole meant that the cabin depressurized and the emergency face masked dropped from the overhead compartments. According to an eyewitnesses account on USAToday, passenger Michael Cunningham said, ?”All of the sudden, the loudest noise I ever heard came out of nowhere,” he says. “There was no pop, no creak, no explosion-like noise. There was just a loud roar. It took me a couple of seconds to wake up. I got the baseball cap out of my face and I look up and there’s the sun coming through the ceiling. … I saw sky where I shouldn’t be seeing it.”
The irony of the hole is that Southwest, famous for painting its planes in different liveries, have a 737 with a whale on the side. Luckily this wasn?t it. See the video below for an American news report on the incident.
In other airlines news, Air France will be the next carrier to receive an Airbus A380. It will get the super plane in November and deploy it on the Paris to New York route. Also, Pet Airways, a carrier exclusively for pets, has taken off in the US.
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