No-Fly Zone

Southwest Grounds 79 Planes

After hole opens in ceiling mid-flight.

Something in the machinery isn’t clean. After a Southwest Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing because of a gaping hole in the plane's ceiling, the company decided Saturday to ground 79 planes from its Boeing 737 fleet for inspection. According to Southwest, engineers will inspect the skin of the aircrafts to try to determine the cause. Meanwhile, the airline company is working with the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA on the ground in Arizona to determine the cause of the fuselage hole and sudden drop in cabin pressure on the Friday flight from Phoenix to Sacramento. “There was a hole in the fuselage about three feet long. You could see the insulation and the wiring,” a woman identified as Cindy told a local CBS television affiliate in Sacramento. Meanwhile, other passengers took to Twitter, with one tweeting she was “happy to be alive,” and another, Shawna MalviniRedden, writing, “Still feel sick. 6 foot hole in the skin of the plane five rows behind me. Unbelievable," and she had earlier texted her husband, “I love you.”