Southwest Airlines addresses exploding soda can issue
Southwest Airlines is rolling out a costly fix to address a bizarre — but long-running — issue... exploding soda cans. The airline has faced years of complaints from flight crews and customers about cans rupturing mid-air.
The eruptions occur when cans have been left in high temperatures for too long. Key hubs such as Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada, were hit particularly badly by the problem last summer when ground temperatures exceeded more than 110 degrees.
'Once it got up to 105, 110, you started hearing the cans before you even saw them you could hear them deforming,' Phoenix ground crew member Jake Stoddard told CBS. 'When it was 115, 120, half of your stock would be deformed. So yeah, it was bad.'
Southwest has now invested millions of dollars in new refrigerated provisioning trucks for the two hottest hubs. The previous trucks, which hold the necessary food and beverages for a new flight before they are loaded on to the aircraft, did not have air conditioning.
The new trucks are kept much cooler at 40 degrees and double up as cooling stations for ground crew. 'Our summers are extending and that product is under that intense heat for longer periods of time,' Steve Land, who oversees Southwest's provisioning team at Phoenix told the publication.
In an added precaution Southwest will also use heat guns to monitor the temperatures of cans this summer. It comes as around 195 million Americans have been issued with extreme heat warnings on Tuesday.
The worst of the heat wave is in the northeast where temperatures in cities such as New York will exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. 'A large portion of the region will see high temperatures ranging between 98 and 101 degrees,' the National Weather Service said in a statement.
'Light winds, sunny skies, and a lack of overnight cooling will pose a significant risk to those without adequate cooling and/or hydration,' the agency warned. Meteorologists say a heat dome - an area of high pressure in the upper atmosphere that locks in heat and humidity - is behind the record busting temperatures.
Medical experts have also warned that the first few heat waves of the summer are particularly dangerous because bodies need time to adjust to the new temperatures. 'You're talking about some places that could be 40 degrees warmer than last week. So that's a big deal,' NOAA meteorologist David Roth told CBS.
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