Southwest Airlines Finds Five Planes In Its 737 Fleet In Need Of Repair

LOS ANGELES, CA - APRIL 05: A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700 passenger jet pulls in to a gate at Los Angeles International Airport on April 5, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. Southwest Airlines said it finished inspecting its grounded 737-300 series planes and of the nearly 80 planes five of them have cracks in the aluminum skin. The inspections come after Southwest Flight 812 had to make an emergency landing when a piece of its fuselage skin was torn while on its way from Phoenix to Sacramento. The discovery prompted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Boeing to require emergency inspections on a portion of the 737 fleet manufactured during the 1980s and 1990s for the same fatigue cracks in the fuselage like the ones on the Southwest jets. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)