LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: We have our aviation correspondent Carl Rochelle down at FAA headquarters, checking into the reports that many of America's older commercial aircraft may have thousands of cracks in electrical wiring, which could lead to shorts and fires. Carl, what's it all about?</s>CARL ROCHELLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Lou, what they have done is the FAA was able to get their hands on six recently retired airplanes from service, including an L-1011, a 747, a couple of DC-9s, and Airbus, and they took these airplanes, and essentially cut them up, to look at what was happening inside the wiring. They found several things, one of the things they did find, I am able to confirm, that there were at least four breaks or a short -- or open pieces of wire, bare wire at every 1,000 feet. But you should not take that to mean that there are four of those kinds of brakes in every one of the aircraft. They say there are no safety of flight issues here, that the airplanes are still safe to fly. But what they have learned is that they need to do better inspection practices, particularly in the areas where there is a great deal of service, where maintenance people go in and work, where fuel could drip on areas of wiring to make sure that that wiring continues to be safe, and they are going to step up the work that they are doing on that. This is all part of a report that's being presented to a technical panel over the next two days here at the FAA. I am Carl Rochelle, CNN, reporting live from Washington.
FAA Finds Fault with Six Recently Retired Airplanes