Thanks Lou-- It will be interesting to see if they (FAA) do find anything incriminating-- I hope not.... I also just see Air New Zealand are inspecting their 14 733's, which is a little closer to home. But I would hope this is mandatory if an incident like fatigue cracking happens to the same a/c type anywhere in the world. I also read it was an "unexpected area for this sort of damage to occur" as someone at Southwest said, anyhow.

A quick question for you Lou(if you have time to answer-you seem a popular guy here!!)- Have you ever flown into/out of New Zealand?? I am in flight training part time(school takes priority for now) and was interested in whether you might have flown here before-especially if it was into Christchurch!!

And to anybody who knows.. and to save me googling it.. Do Southwest outsource their maintenance??

Cheers,
nzaviationrules.  :) :)