for fuselage cracks on nearly 60,000 flights. mary schiavo now represents clients suing the airline industry. good morning, mary. good morning, carol. just two years ago, they were fined $7.5 million because they did not inspect planes for this very problem. what was up with that? was the fine not big enough? probably not, the fine wasn t big enough. but two things occurred. one, they allowed visual inspections. some of these cracks are very difficult to see and you have to use ultrasonic or sometimes even magnetic resonance. you have to treat to plane as if it s a body and you re looking for problems. so the visual inspections cannot find all these cracks. the second thing that occurred after that, southwest did hire experts to come in and look at the cracking situation, but the experts and boeing said that some cracking was okay. in some cases, up to 6 inches. and they had a procedure where
southwest did hire experts to come in and look at the cracking situation. but the experts in boeing said that some cracking was okay. in some cases up to six inches. we should note that this isn t the first time this has happened. back in 2009, a southwest plane was forced to make an emergency landing for the very same thing. that was four months after the airline was fined $7.5 million by the faa for failing to perform mandatory inspections for fuselage cracks on nearly 60,000 flights. it is official, folks. here is the message president obama tweeted this morning. it announced he is launching a campaign for a second term. he also drives people to his official campaign website in a video entitled it begins with us. noticeably absent were the familiar slogans which called for change in 2008. so let s talk more about this with dana lowe, cnn contributor