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.
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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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.
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'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.
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
This is the best summary I could come up with:
BOSTON - A United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Boston was diverted to Denver on Monday because of an issue with the plane's wing - and a worried passenger on board captured the apparent problem on video.
"Just about to land in Denver with the wing coming apart on the plane," Kevin Clarke says in a video shared with CBS News.
"Sitting right on the wing and the noise after reaching altitude was much louder than normal.
The passengers were put on a different plane and landed in Boston early Tuesday morning.
Boeing has been under scrutiny since a door panel on a different kind of aircraft, a 737 Max 9, blew off during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.
Earlier this month, the head of the FAA pledged to use more people to monitor aircraft manufacturing and hold Boeing accountable for any safety rule violations.
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