Fuselage

A Coast Guard cutter recovered and brought to shore several sections of fuselage from the space shuttle Challenger, including parts of its wings and the underside of its cockpit, found Thursday night in ocean waters north of here. Sonar equipment aboard the cutter also indicated a large object resting on the sea floor and a National Aeronautics and Space Administration retrieval vessel and divers were summoned.

Frank Nicolas Piasecki, an aviation pioneer who invented the twin-rotor technology that led to development of the widely flown Chinook heavy-lift helicopter, has died. He was 88. Piasecki, who had recently suffered a stroke, died Monday at his home in Haverford, Pa., his family said in a statement. He is believed to have died of cardiac arrest.

The hole that ripped through the fuselage of a Southwest Airlines Co. jet last week could have lasting repercussions: higher fares. On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration formally ordered U.S. airlines to inspect their older and most heavily used Boeing 737 jetliners for fuselage cracks. The FAA directive initially requires the inspections of 80 planes flown in the U.S. by Southwest and Alaska Airlines Inc. But that could expand to as many as 570 planes in the next few years because the FAA wants all older Boeing 737s closely inspected within five days if they've made at least 35,000 takeoffs and landings, or flight cycles.

Warning that the problem could lead to the crash of a jumbo jet, the government Monday ordered an emergency inspection of Boeing 747s after severe cracks were found in their fuselages, including one instance in which three parts of a fuselage frame were found to be "essentially severed." The Federal Aviation Administration, which issued the order, stopped short of grounding the nation's Boeing 747 commercial air fleet. The Boeing Co.

The federal government ordered the inspection of old Boeing 737s late last year for cracks in the portion of the upper fuselage where a 19-year-old Aloha Airlines jetliner ripped open in the sky southeast of Maui, officials said Friday. The Federal Aviation Administration also ordered a lower-fuselage inspection of the nation's entire Boeing 737 fleet in 1982, the officials said. That directive was prompted by the possibility of corrosion, which weakens the fuselage skin.

An apparent terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Trans World Airlines jetliner 15,000 feet over Greece on Wednesday, blowing out four passengers to their deaths, but the pilot safely landed the crippled plane here just minutes later.

A gaping hole ripped open on the right side of a United Airlines jumbo jet carrying 354 people today, sucking eight to 11 passengers to their death 20,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, authorities said. The pilot brought the Boeing 747 back safely for an emergency landing, despite the failure of two of the four engines. At least 17 passengers were injured. The damaged airliner was Flight 811 to New Zealand and Australia that had originated in San Francisco and included a stop in Los Angeles.

A United Airlines jumbo jet that had to make an emergency landing last week at Los Angeles International Airport was missing a tiny steel bolt from its nose and fuselage wheel system, preventing those wheels from lowering, a federal inspector said Tuesday. Moreover, an identical bolt affecting the jet's wing wheels--the final set of wheels upon which the aircraft landed--was working itself loose, said Jeff Rich, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator.

A small twin-engine plane crashed into a crowd of families as they began their Fourth of July picnics at a San Dimas park Thursday afternoon, killing four people and injuring at least 12, four of them critically. Among the dead were the pilot, a 12-year-old girl and a 15-month-old boy. Officials said the Cessna 310 was lifting off from nearby Brackett Field in La Verne when the pilot, Michael Brand, radioed that he was having trouble climbing.

Like a glorious peacock amid a field of drab peahens, the new FAA First Federal Credit Union headquarters stands out from the more conservative buildings that surround it in a Hawthorne business park. Designed by Nadel Architects Inc. of Los Angeles, the building is unusual for its complex shape--described by its architects as "two cones, one concave and one convex, that are joined in the middle."