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.
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
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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