Airlines for America Honors Boeing-United-Southwest Team with “Better Way Award” at 56th Nondestructive Testing Forum

Airlines for America (A4A), the industry trade organization for the leading U.S. airlines, presented the 11th Annual "Better Way Award" at the recent Nondestructive Testing Forum to a team comprising members from Boeing, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines for furthering the science and efficacy of nondestructive testing (NDT).

The team from Boeing, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines earned the award for their work developing a "Wide Field High Frequency Eddy Current Array" surface inspection procedure to improve inspection speed and reduce human factors issues. The method is now used by United, Southwest and other airlines on horizontal stabilizer skins to shorten inspection time from 12 hours to four hours, while maintaining small detectable crack size and reducing the occurrence of repetitive motion injuries.

Members of the 2013 "Better Way Award" team include Shawn Hill, Jeff Thompson, Dave Messner and John Linn from Boeing; Sam Tucker, Jason Meade and Juan Gomez from United Airlines; and Dorsey Perkins and Jason Hill from Southwest Airlines.

"A4A congratulates this year's winning team for their collaborative effort to develop an innovative aircraft inspection procedure," said Dan Elwell, A4A's Senior Vice President of Safety, Security and Operations. "Working in partnership, this team of industry leaders has advanced surface inspections while also improving efficiency and reliability of the process."

The A4A NDT Forum marked its 56th year at a four-day conference held in Indianapolis, where industry leaders met to discuss current trends, issues and successes in NDT methodologies. The event featured a number of presentations on achievements and lessons learned about technologies that help ensure the life and safety of aircraft structures by detecting defects well before they can be seen or cause a failure. This year's topics focused on showcasing methodologies associated with composite structures and new repair methods for older aircraft models.

ABOUT A4A

Annually, commercial aviation helps drive more than $1 trillion in U.S. economic activity and more than 10 million U.S. jobs. A4A airline members and their affiliates transport more than 90 percent of all U.S. airline passenger and cargo traffic. America needs a cohesive National Airline Policy that will support the integral role the nation's airlines play in connecting people and goods globally, spur the nation's economic growth and create more high-paying jobs.

For more information about the airline industry, visit www.airlines.org and follow us on Twitter @airlinesdotorg.

For more information about the National Airline Policy campaign:

Visit: www.nationalairlinepolicy.com

Twitter: @Natl_Air_Policy

Facebook: facebook.com/nationalairlinepolicy

SOURCE: BUSINESS WIRE