[Flieger]

Originally Posted by J P Stein

Odd....from what I read the cracking has been blamed, by some, to have occurred during the manufacturing process and the cracks have also been called inconsequential......right. Either way, somebody screwed the pooch.

OK, but the BBC article supports that these are normal fatigue cracks, but growing at a faster rate than expected it appears.

With this type of fatigue, cracks take a lot of cycles to form, then they start growing a little bit each cycle in a stable crack propagation with little consequence other than a bit of lost rigidity. At a certain point they reach a critical length where the stress concentration is too much and the cracks start growing unstably (fracture).