Passenger sees "wing coming apart" on United flight from San Francisco to Boston; flight forced to land in Denver
Passenger sees "wing coming apart" on United flight from San Francisco to Boston; flight forced to land in Denver
A United Airlines flight to Boston was diverted to Denver because of an issue with the plane's wing.
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To my untrained eye, yeah that's kinda sketch, the skin is peeling off. Definitely get mad at the mantanance people. But it also doesn't look dangerous on its own; it's just a covering for the actual wing.
What you’re seeing is the flap, used sometimes during lift-off, but most commonly to apply drag for a slower landing. It’s not ideal, but flap-less landings are done and trained for. This plane was delivered in 1994, and they’ve been slowly phasing them out.
It's not a flap (back of the wing), it's a slat (front of the wing), says so right in TFA.
Ah my bad, the linked article didn’t specify and I wrongly assumed the angle the pic was taken at.
Are we looking at different pictures?
Flying while missing a whole tail rudder is entirely doable. A hole in a wing just isn't as serious.
I'll give you that, but what you said was that it was just the skin peeling
It looked like peeling skin on my phone. ¯\ _(ツ) _/¯
Oh. Turns out, we were looking at different pictures! You're right, that one with the flaps retracted does kinda just look like it's the skin. I was looking at the one with the flaps deployed, where it's much more obvious that the core of the flap is missing.
That depends on how it affects near-stall flight.
The most efficient cruise that is legal, is 1.30x stall-speed.
If that damage on the leading portion of the wing means your "1.30x" stall-speed cruise is now actually 1.00x, you're gambling.
There was a DC9 that killed everybody because of pebbled ice wrecking its actual-stall-speed, years ago.
Landing also requires that you dance at the edge of stall, & if your idea of where stall-speed is, is wrong, ..
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I imagine that could affect aerodynamics of the plane and ability of the pilots to control it when the outside of the wing peels off like that
