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What: Transaero Airlines Boeing 737-300 en route from Moscow Domodedovo to St. Petersburg (Russia)
Where: Moscow
When: Jul 20th 2009
Who: 41 passengers and 6 crew
Why: On takeoff, the right wing lost a 60 by 80 centimeter “leading edge fairing”. The flight continued as usual and fortunately landed safely in St. Petersburg.

The part was found on the Domodedova airport runway.

George’s Point of View

I’m sure that all of us have heard of the old saying (paraphrased from De Minimis Maxima ) the mighty oak from tiny acorns grow.

When one considers the question of pieces falling off of a plane, it seems simultaneously a tiny pointless thing and a huge issue. Consider a miniscule hole in the roof of our house is hardly worth considering; perhaps it is even invisible to the naked eye. But look what damage it causes when it rains. Somehow I don’t think “the leading edge” is like a car’s hubcap, mostly for decoration. It’s there to do something, and when that part is gone, that something is undone and will have consequences. Maybe letting in some moisture. Maybe causing corrosion down the road.

As a frequent passenger, I tend to be somewhat fatalistic about plane parts. Look, some engineer put that part there for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is, but if it’s good enough for the plane’s engineer, it is good enough for me, and I’d just as soon not fly without it. So many carriers get bad reputations based on careless maintenance of old planes, and this is just the kind of incident that gets people talking. (Old planes need MORE maintenance as they get older, just like old furniture, old machines, old cars, old people, old EVERYTHING.) Certainly Russia knows that maintenance deferred–especially on an airplane–is a recipe for disaster.

I just hope they replace the part before the little acorn of a problem grows into a great big oak tree of a pending disaster. This may be the first incident in a chain of events that unravels the whole plane.