Aloha Airlines Flight 243

Aloha Airlines Flight 243 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight flown by Aloha Airlines between Hilo and Honolulu in Hawaii. On April 28, 1988, the Boeing 737-200 airplane serving the flight suffered extensive damage after an explosive decompression in flight, caused by part of the fuselage breaking due to poor maintenance and metal fatigue. The plane was able to land safely at Kahului Airport on Maui. The one fatality, flight attendant Clarabelle "C.B." Lansing, was ejected from the airplane. Sixty-five passengers and crew were injured. The substantial damage inflicted by the decompression, the loss of one cabin crew member, and the safe landing of the aircraft established the accident as a significant event in the history of aviation, with far-reaching effects on aviation safety policies and procedures.

Accident

Flight 243 departed from Hilo International Airport at 13:25 HST on April 28, 1988, with 5 crew members and 90 passengers on board (including an air traffic controller travelling on the cockpit jumpseat), bound for Honolulu. Nothing unusual was noted during the pre-departure inspection of the aircraft, which had already completed three uneventful round-trip flights between Honolulu and Hilo, Maui, and Kauai earlier that day. Meteorological conditions were checked, but no advisories for weather phenomena were reported along the air route, per AIRMETs or SIGMETs.

After a routine takeoff and ascent, just as the aircraft had reached its normal flight altitude of 24000 ft, at 13:46, about 23 nmi south-southeast of Kahului on Maui, a section on the left side of the roof ruptured with a "whooshing" sound. The captain felt the aircraft roll to the left and right, and the controls went loose; the first officer noticed pieces of gray insulation "floating in the cockpit". The cockpit door had broken away and the captain could see "blue sky where the first-class ceiling had been." A large section of the roof had torn off, consisting of the entire top half of the aircraft skin extending from just behind the cockpit to the fore-wing area, a length of about 18 ft.

The only fatality was 58-year-old chief flight attendant Clarabelle "C.B." Lansing, a veteran of 37 years, who was swept out of the airplane while standing near the fifth-row seats; her body was never found. Eight other people, including one flight attendant, suffered serious injuries; 57 passengers suffered minor injuries. All passengers had been seated and were wearing their seat belts during the depressurization.

First Officer Tompkins was the pilot flying at the time of the accident; Captain Schornstheimer took over controls and performed an immediate emergency descent. The crew declared an emergency and diverted to Kahului Airport for an emergency landing. During the approach to the airport, the left engine failed, and the flight crew was unsure if the nose gear were lowered correctly. Nevertheless, they landed normally on Runway 2, thirteen minutes after the accident. Upon landing, the aircraft's emergency evacuation slides were deployed and passengers quickly evacuated from the aircraft. Sixty-five people were reported injured, eight of them seriously. At the time, Maui had no plan in place for such an emergency. The injured were taken to the hospital in tour vans belonging to Akamai Tours, driven by office personnel and mechanics, as the island only had two ambulances. Air traffic control radioed Akamai and requested as many of their 15-passenger vans as they could spare to go to the airport (which was 3 mi from their base) to transport the injured. Two of the Akamai drivers were former paramedics and established a triage on the runway.