Uhhhh this seems to imply that the fuselages aren’t normally checked for cracks.
They are checked. On a schedule. Sometimes it’s discovered that the original maintenance schedule was too spaced out, and the aircraft should be checked more frequently. This means that any that have exceeded the new length of time between checks have to be checked right away or be grounded until they are, which may be what happened here.
That doesn’t mean that even the new schedule for this particular aircraft is frequent enough, just that in general, someone does examine aircraft for structural damage and metal fatigue from time to time.
Boeing doesn’t actually want the aircraft to come apart in the air. That’s the kind of thing that makes airlines buy Airbuses instead. Their goal is to try to figure out what the cheapest, least-frequent maintenance schedule is that will still keep the planes from catastrophically self-destructing. Too bad they suck at it.
They are checked. On a schedule. Sometimes it’s discovered that the original maintenance schedule was too spaced out, and the aircraft should be checked more frequently. This means that any that have exceeded the new length of time between checks have to be checked right away or be grounded until they are, which may be what happened here.
That doesn’t mean that even the new schedule for this particular aircraft is frequent enough, just that in general, someone does examine aircraft for structural damage and metal fatigue from time to time.
Boeing doesn’t actually want the aircraft to come apart in the air. That’s the kind of thing that makes airlines buy Airbuses instead. Their goal is to try to figure out what the cheapest, least-frequent maintenance schedule is that will still keep the planes from catastrophically self-destructing. Too bad they suck at it.