[URY914]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

There is no door in that area of the aircraft.

The hole looks worse than it is. Most of the damage is to the fiberglass wing to body fairing, or "A/C fairing". It is neither pressurized nor a structural part of the airframe. If you examine the photo, you will notice the bags are visible in what appears to be an "inner" hole, inboard of the A/C fairing. This is the actual hole in the structure. It took out what looks to be 6-7 stingers, but no frames. There is a "skin lap" in that area, or a top to bottom overlapping of the upper and lower skins. That's kind of significant, structurally. In addition, there is a pretty big wire bundle that passes through there. I bet it didn't do that bundle any good...

There is an oxygen bottle located in that area. My guess is that something happened to that bottle; it failed in some way. We'll see.

I might get a trip to Australia out of this one, anyway. Pretty easily repaired.

Just what I was thinking too.