Holed Southwest Airlines flight makes emergency landing

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by Growler

All of this said, while the scene was undoubtedly bad, the rip-stop straps in the installation did their job - the airframe held together for the flight crew to put in on the ground. That, in some small way, is a victory.

Yes, when you start designing for controlled failures, rather than catastrophic ones, you can usually provide operators time to avert or at least recover before some really bad happens.