That, he said, could lead to metal fatigue and other problems.
By 1985 they had been withdrawn from service due to metal fatigue.
One issue is the mean time between failures due to metal fatigue.
With all the damage and the heat, it's hard to tell, but he thinks it was metal fatigue.
Building inspectors identified metal fatigue as the cause of the break.
"If I work on a story too long, it's like metal fatigue," she says.
The safety board also said it was concerned about a second problem with the engines: metal fatigue.
This reduced the part's resistance to metal fatigue by 70%.
Metal fatigue has been a major cause of aircraft failure, especially before the process was well understood.
As in plane crashes, one question will be whether metal fatigue was a factor.