Pickle fork cracking
 

QF have grounded 3 x 738s with pickle fork cracks. It has been suggested elsewhere that the oldest frame is amongst those grounded. It’s early days, but has anyone noticed any changes in the scheduled flights - such as cancellations? I assume it’ll be easy to pull a plane from the “golden triangle” and perhaps shuffle 330s instead of 738s, but unsure how QF will juggle things if more cracking is found.

Given that all required 738s have now been inspected, one would assume no further cracking will be found .... pretty impressive by QF to complete the inspections within 7 days when originally scheduled over 7 months. Interesting that the cracks in all 3 planes are at the same bolt, suggests some miscalculation of the strain loading, perhaps during landing bounces. Should be an easy fix, and doubt there is any impact on schedules as its only 4% of the 738 fleet; maybe cause some other planes to defer maintenance until after the return to service of the pickle forks :) .

My insider update is that the 717 fleet (and crews) have capacity available to assist but have not been required to thus far (they sometimes pick up routes like ADL-BNE/CBR/SYD when there are 737 availability issues)

QF is a bit unlucky having 3 bad 737s out of their small fleet .... Southwest also found 3 needing repairs, out of 750 in their fleet. On the other hand GOL found 11 needing repairs, and it is running about 5% for the repair rate of the 1000 planes inspected so far. Cost is USD 275k per plane for the repair (plust the time out of service), so not a huge cost for QF. Joyce spends more than that for his flights :)

Korean Air reportedly also has 9 out 32 total 737s (and probably not all 32 were at the 22.6+k cycle inspection level).

Agree QF has been a little unlucky with 3/33, and Virgin Aus (at 0/19) lucky.