Southwest grounds planes after roof rips open on 737

PHOENIX  Southwest Airlines will ground 79 of its Boeing 737 planes for inspection after the roof ripped open on one of its flights, the company said Saturday.

"The safety of our customers and employees is our primary concern, and we are grateful there were no serious injuries," said Mike Van de Ven, Southwest's executive vice president and chief operating officer, in a statement.

TODAY IN THE SKY: Southwest flight makes emergency landing, 'hole' found on top of jet

Southwest expects to cancel about 300 flights nationwide Saturday. Customers should check the status of their flight online before heading to the airport, said Southwest spokesperson Brandy King.

It is unclear how long the inspections will take, she said.

Southwest Flight 812 from Phoenix to Sacramento made an emergency landing in Yuma after the roof ripped open Friday, passengers said.

The flight left Sky Harbor International Airport around 3:25 p.m. and landed safely at Yuma Marine Corps. Air Station at 4:07 p.m., said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

There were 118 passengers and five crewmembers on board. A flight attendant and one passenger received minor injuries, according to a Southwest statement. All passengers will receive a full refund along with an apology and two complimentary roundtrip passes on Southwest for future flights, the company said.

The plane is a 15-year-old Boeing 737-300. Southwest operates about 170 of the 737-300s in its fleet of about 540 planes, but it replaced the aluminum skin on many of the 300s in recent years, spokeswoman Linda Rutherford said. The 80 planes being grounded have not had their skin replaced, she said.

"Obviously we're dealing with a skin issue, and we believe that these 80 airplanes are covered by a set of (federal safety rules) that make them candidates to do this additional inspection that Boeing is devising for us," Rutherford said.

Southwest officials said the Arizona plane had undergone all inspections required by the FAA, but they did not immediately provide the date of the last inspection.

The 737-300 is the oldest plane in Southwest's fleet, and the company is retiring 300s as it take deliveries of new Boeing 737-700s and, beginning next year, 737-800s. But the process of replacing all the 300s could take years.

Passenger Brenda Reese said the top of the Boeing 737 ripped open, leaving a gaping hole between 5- to 6-feet long.

Reese said it sounded like an explosion when the top of the plane "popped off" and that passengers only had a few seconds to put their oxygen masks on. She said a few people passed out because they couldn't get to oxygen fast enough.

"The noise woke me up and instantly the mask dropped," Reese said. When she realized there was a hole in the plane, Reese thought, "God, bring me safely home to my three children."

Reese told The Republic that the pilot handled the emergency well, and passengers applauded him when he left the cockpit after the landing.

Another passenger, Larry Downey, said he was directly below the hole when it opened up.

"You could look out and see blue sky," Downey said.

He said a flight attendant didn't get an oxygen mask on fast enough and the man fell and hit his head. "It was pandemonium," Downey said.

The FAA reported that the pilot made a rapid descent from 36,000 feet to 11,000 feet after the hole opened.

Jim Tilman, an aviation consultant and longtime pilot, said the plane had to make a rapid descent to bring the passengers to breathable air. He said the hole in the plane would not have affected the pilot's ability to control the aircraft and that the crew would have had plenty of time to get the plane down.

"The crews are very well trained to handle this," Tilman said.

An inspector from the FAA was on scene Friday night, Gregor said. Teams from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the hole.

A similar incident on a Southwest plane to Baltimore in July 2009 also forced an emergency landing when a foot-long hole opened in the cabin.

Four months earlier, the Dallas-based airline had agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle charges that it operated planes that had missed required safety inspections for cracks in the fuselage. The airline inspected nearly 200 of its planes back then, found no cracks and put them back in the sky.

Contributing: KPNX-TV, Phoenix; The Associated Press