78 injured as Indonesian jet breaks in two

78 injured as Indonesian jet breaks in two

edition.cnn.com

Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) -- A passenger plane crashed into a shallow waterway and broke in two after overshooting the runway in a remote area of Indonesia's eastern Papua province on Tuesday, injuring 78 people on board.

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I know that many are busy looking into the polish plane crash at the minute but there seems to be no talk of this accident at all. What i do find disturbing about this is that the plane snapped in half? Surely this is a major fault? I mean yeah planes can have technical failures but surely the body itself should be structurally better than this? Im starting to wonder about my wifes dream of recent which she said that planes were falling from the sky.

edition.cnn.com
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Originally posted by jazz10
Surely this is a major fault? I mean yeah planes can have technical failures but surely the body itself should be structurally better than this?

It is Indonesia we're talking about here. They are not a rich country and I doubt their maintenance is anywhere near as good as Western nations. They probably buy planes and run them until ...... they snap in half

Either way my condolences to Indonesia for it's loss if you need any help I'm sure Australia will be only too happy to render assistance.

Wow, a lot of planes have been crashing lately, how very curious? I think that the fact that it is Indonesian might have something to do with it, but they still do have a government and gov't regulations. Besides, what small unchecked problem could cause a plane to snap in two?

reply to post by jazz10

I mean yeah planes can have technical failures but surely the body itself should be structurally better than this?

No, this is quite common. You must understand, first, how the airplanes are constructed in order to know why this happens.

The fuselageis built up of several sections, each a cylinder, of sorts, then connected together to complete the whole.

On the B-737, each section is about ten to fifteen windows in length, just to get a perspective and idea for size. These sections are built in Wichita (in the case of the 737) then transported on special railcars to Seattle, Washington, where they are assembled, along with all the other components, on the production line.



Here is an image of a similar section, this from a future Boeing 787:



737 being assembled, in the factory:



Before being mated to the wing assembly:



Here's another:



The overall structure is quite strong, and designed to stay intact during normally occuring loads in flight operations (and even designed to withstand certain levels of g force beyond, as well), but in those sorts of accidents the forces exceed the strength of the materials.



[edit on 13 April 2010 by weedwhacker]

These things come in 3s. So by that logic, there will be another plane related incident soon. (next week or 2)

I wonder if nature would accept a plain related incident.

reply to post by Acidtastic


Yeah and what event is happening now? Theyve went but they gotta come back?

Got home from work and the ticker on Aljazeera is saying that another plane has crashed.

didn't have to wait 2 weeks after all.