they had corrosion on the top of the airplane and nobody noticed the metal fatigue. so one question they ll be having here is whether they properly maintained and then constantly checked to see whether there was any metal fatiguing and cracking after that repair was made. and i know people have been focused on the debris field and talking about how the trail was further away from the rest of the field. does that come into play when you think about whether there were cracks or problems with the plane? absolutely. because we go back to that scenario that in the metal fatiguing created a situation where in flight, suddenly the tail separates from the rest of the plane, you may have had a situation where the tail then drops from its current location and the plane continues its forward trajectory until it goes into the desert three or seven miles away. that s not at all unexpected.
it says our thoughts are with everyone affected by today s incident at sfo, we stand ready to assist the nt bb. again, that is boeing. jennifer, stand by. richard quest, stand by. go ahead, jim tillmon. what happens once the tail separates from the airplane, you have no control, lateral control, that is the twisting of the airplane around its axis. you do have a little bit of control perhaps still within the wing structure to keep the wings relatively level and that was one of the reasons, the fact that it was level, that you may have a lot of people survive this because had the airplane gone upside down or done the cartwheel like what was described before, we would have not only more structural damage, we may have had a lot more injuries on board. what happened this thing was spinning like a top around right. as opposed to cartwheeling like has been described before. got it.