Crackdown on Fatigue

Culminating years of work aimed at preventing aging airliners from being flown with widespread fatigue damage (WFD), the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a rule requiring the development of an inspection program for transport category airplanes.¹

The FAA’s final rule governing the inspections took effect Jan. 14. It gives design approval holders between 18 months and five years, depending on the airplane, to develop inspection programs. Operators then have an additional 2½ to six years to implement the inspection requirements.

The campaign to address the problem of WFD began in the aftermath of an April 28, 1988, accident in which an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-200 experienced an explosive decompression and separation of an 18-ft (5-m) section of the upper portion of the cabin fuselage (see “There Was Blue Sky”).²