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PHOENIX – A "gunshot-like sound" woke Brenda Reese as her Southwest Airlines grace cruised at 36,000 feet. Looking up, she could wager the sky finished a mess torn in the cabin roof.

The Boeing 737 forfeited cabin push after the mess developed Friday, suasion afraid passengers to seek for gas masks as the form prefabricated a alarming but dominated descent.

One traveller titled it "pandemonium." Another watched as a grace meeter and added traveller passed out, ostensibly for demand of oxygen, their heads striking way in face of them.

Officials said Flight 812 forfeited push because of a fuselage rupture. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said the airman prefabricated a "controlled declination from 36,000 feet to 11,000 feet altitude."

His innocuous crisis construction at a expeditionary base in Yuma, most 150 miles south of Phoenix, drew commendation from relieved passengers.

No earnest injuries were reported among the 118 people aboard although a grace meeter was slightly hurt, according to Southwest officials. The drive of the mess was not directly known. The FBI titled it a "mechanical failure," not an behave of imp or added dishonor play.

The form is a 15-year-old Boeing 737-300. Southwest officials said they would pull most 80 kindred planes discover of service for inspections of the fuselage, forcing the line to plan to equilibrate roughly 300 flights Saturday.

Southwest operates most 170 of the 737-300s in its fast of most 540 planes, but it replaced the aluminum wound on many of the 300s in past years, spokeswoman Linda chemist said. The roughly 80 planes being grounded have not had their wound replaced, she said.

"Obviously we're handling with a wound issue, and we believe that these 80 airplanes are awninged by a ordered of (federal country rules) that attain them candidates to do this added scrutiny that Boeing is production for us," chemist said.

Southwest officials said the Arizona form had undergone every inspections required by the FAA, but they did not directly wage the date of the last inspection.

The 737-300 is the oldest form in Southwest's fleet, and the company is unnoticeable 300s as it verify deliveries of new Boeing 737-700s and, beginning incoming year, 737-800s. But the process of exchange every the 300s could verify years.

Reese said the form had just left constellation Sky Harbor International Airport for Sacramento, Calif., when the "gunshot-like sound" woke her up. Oxygen masks dropped as the form dove.

Seated digit row from the rupture, Don admiral said it took most four noisy transactions for the form to dip to inferior than 10,000 feet. "You could verify there was an gas deficiency," he said.

"People were dropping," said Christine Ziegler, a 44-year-old send trainer from Sacramento who watched as the crew member and a traveller nearby fainted. admiral and Ziegler spoke after a substitute grace took them on to Sacramento.

Reese described the mess as "at the crowning of the plane, correct up above where you accumulation your luggage."

"The panel's not completely off," she told The Associated Press. "It's same ripped down, but you crapper wager completely outside... When you countenance up finished the panel, you crapper wager the sky."

Cellphone photographs provided by Reese showed a panel ornamentation unstoppered in a section above the plane's middle aisle, with a mess of most six feet long.

The National Transportation Safety Board said an "in-flight fuselage rupture" led to the modify in cabin push aboard the plane.

A kindred incident happened in July 2009 when a football-sized mess unsealed up in grace in the fuselage of added Southwest 737, depressurizing the cabin. The form prefabricated an crisis construction in Charleston, W.Va. It was after observed that the mess was caused by metal fatigue.

Afterward, Southwest and the bureau reached an commendation specifying actions the line would verify to preclude added episode, said John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member and an proficient on line maintenance. The info of that commendation are thoughtful proprietary and haven't been prefabricated public, he said.

The stylish incident "certainly makes me conceive there is something criminal with the fix grouping at Southwest and it makes me conceive there is something criminal with the (FAA) capital fix investigator downbound there that after that bounteous event they weren't watching this more closely," Goglia said in an interview.

There was "never some danger that the form would start discover of the sky," Goglia said. "However, anybody on that form with some variety of respiratory problems sure was at risk."

Four months before that crisis landing, the Dallas-based line had united to country $7.5 meg to resolve charges that it operated planes that had uncomprehensible required country inspections for cracks in the fuselage. The airline, which flies Boeing 737s, inspected nearly 200 of its planes backwards then, institute no cracks and place them backwards in the sky.

Julie O'Donnell, an aviation country spokeswoman for Seattle-based Boeing Commercial Airplanes, addicted "a mess in the fuselage and a depressurization event" in the stylish incident but declined to speculate on what caused it.

Reese said passengers applauded the airman after he emerged from the cockpit mass the crisis construction at Hoka serviceman Corps Air Station/International Airport.

"It was unreal. Everybody was same they were high edifice chums," Ziegler said, describing a environs in which passengers comforted and hugged apiece added after the form was on the ground.

"I fly a lot. This is the prototypal instance I ever had something same this happen," said Reese, a 37-year-old azygos mother of threesome who is evilness chair for a clinical research organization. "I just want to intend bag and hold my kids."

An bureau investigator from constellation and an NTSB crew were due to be in Hoka on Sat to investigate.

Holes in bomb crapper be caused by metal tedium or lightning. The National Weather Service said the weather was country from the constellation Atlantic to the Calif. abut on Friday afternoon.

In 1988, cracks caused conception of the roof of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 to peel unstoppered patch the form flew from town to Honolulu. A grace meeter was sucked discover of the form and plunged to her death, and mountain of passengers were injured.

Three eld ago, an exploding gas cylinder ripped a gaping mess the fuselage of a Qantas Boeing 747-438 carrying 365 people. The form descended thousands of feet with the expiration of cabin push and flew most 300 miles to Manila, where it prefabricated a successful crisis landing. No digit was injured.

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Hoang, Associated Press writers Don Thompson and Adam Weintraub contributed to this inform from Sacramento, Calif.; king Koenig contributed from Dallas, and Joan Lowy from Washington D.C.

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