Fragment hasła Lot Aloha Airlines 243 pozostały do przetłumaczenia:

After the accident, a full-scale investigation was launched by the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). It concluded that the accident was caused by metal fatigue exacerbated by crevice corrosion (the plane operated in a salt water environment).^[1] The root cause of the problem was failure of an epoxy adhesive used to bond to the aluminum sheets of the fuselage together when the B737 was manufactured. Where it failed to bond the two surfaces together properly, water was able to enter the gap and start the corrosion process. Because the corrosion products have a larger volume than the underlying metal, the two sheets were forced apart, putting extra stress on the rivets that were also used to hold them together. The age of the aircraft became a key issue (it was 19 years old at the time of the accident and had sustained a remarkable number of takeoff-landing cycles — 89,090, second most cycles for a plane in the world at the time -- well beyond the 75,000 trips it was designed to sustain). Aircraft now receive additional maintenance checks as they age. However, several other aircraft operating under similar environments did not present the same phenomenon. A deep and thorough inspection of Aloha Airlines by NTSB revealed that the most extensive and longer "D Check" was performed in several early morning installments, instead of a full uninterrupted maintenance procedure. They also found that eddy-current testing inspections on the fuselage skin, as prescribed by Boeing, had not been performed.^{[potrzebny przypis]}

According to the official NTSB report of the investigation, Gayle Yamamoto, a passenger, noticed a crack in the fuselage upon boarding the aircraft prior to the ill-fated flight but did not notify anyone.^[2] The crack was located aft of the front port side passenger door. This crack was probably due to metal fatigue related to the 89,090 compression and decompression cycles experienced in the short hop flights by Aloha.

In addition, the United States Congress passed the Aviation Safety Research Act of 1988 in the wake of the disaster. This provided for stricter research into probable causes of future airplane disasters.

Both pilots remained with Aloha Airlines. Robert Schornsteimer retired from Aloha Airlines in August, 2005. At that time, Madeline Tompkins was still a captain of the airline's Boeing 737-700 aircraft.

Pressure vessel engineer Matt Austin has proposed an alternate theory to explain the disintegration of the fuselage of Flight 243.^[2][3] This explanation postulates that initially the fuselage failed as intended and opened a 10" square vent. As the cabin air escaped at over 700mph, flight attendant C.B. Lansing became wedged in the vent instead of being immediately thrown clear of the aircraft. The blockage would have immediately created a pressure spike in the escaping air, a fluid hammer, which tore the jet apart. The NTSB recognizes this theory, but the board does not share the conclusion and maintain their original finding that the fuselage failed at multiple points at once. Former NTSB investigator Brian Richardson, who led the NTSB study of Flight 243, believes the fluid hammer explanation deserves further study.^[3]

Due to the plane's state, the airframe was scrapped by a Maui metal recycler after transport through Kahului. A belt buckle made from the scrapped plane now resides, along with a photo of the plane in the scrapyard, at the Paper Airplane Museum in the Maui Mall.