Official engineers report:
The window had accumulated 81,844 hours in-service, and 46,326 hours since being installed on ZK-NCI. Prior to the window shattering event, the window had a small area of delamination at the outer extremities that was being monitored. It's most likely that this area of delamination has spread rapidly across the window, starting at the window heater terminals. While an extreme event, it is not unheard of, and not a major safety concern.
One of the reasons for the return to AKL was aircraft recovery, due to the logistics of arranging a window change in APW.
Apparantly the window has to be installed in the dry, and given no hanger at Apia they weren't going risk instalations in the rain.
I also understand that the flight flies to Apia and doesn't refuel there- the pilot certainly used the whole length of the runway to roll out on return to Auckland.
Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:08 pm
