[Growler]

Gimpy...

I'm not even sure where to start addressing that.

For starters: Aircraft are NOT duplicates of the ones that went off the assembly line before them. There are thousands of parts, and dozens of people involved in the assembly, quality checking, shakedown flights - there are literally thousands of ways for an aircraft to de-cert before ever leaving the yard the first time. every inspection after that has the same possibility.

Do you drive your car for 600 miles a day, every day, and not expect something to go wrong? Of course not, so you take preventative measures - new tires, oil changes, new wiper blades, replace headlights, etc. Does that mean you don't - occasionally - have problems with your car?

You can NEVER predict with 100% when a particular part will fail, especially when it's in constant interaction with other parts and the environment. The fact is, Southwest DOES push their airplanes hard - and to date, they have had very few serious incidents, and perhaps two fatalities involving their aircraft or actions of their aircraft. That's not two crashes - that's two individual people, and one of those was on the ground in Chicago when an SWA 737 overran the runway at Midway. So, with that record - if they're pushing their aircraft hard, their maintenance crews seem to have stepped up to meet those demands pretty well.

So now, they're taking ~80 aircraft out of service to re-check them, at considerable revenue loss to them, to make certain their remaining -300s are safe. Good for them, and good for us who fly them - it's not only sane business practice, but it's good PR, too.

You're making it sound like anyone under a 737 right about now is in danger of being pelted by aluminum rain, and the evidence just doesn't bear that out.