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March 10th, 1987. A Pan Am Boeing 747 had just departed Heathrow for a service to New York. It was a routine flight, a one that the crew would have taken numerous times before. Not long into the flight as the plane climbed above central England, the pilots of this 747 began noticing problems relating to the pressurization of the aircraft. Passing 20,000 feet the plane failed to pressurize. The crew descend and attempted to re-climb but still the plane failed to pressurize as normal. The pilots soon turned their plane back around to London.
The pilots did land their plane safely without issues or injury, but the problem became rather clear upon inspect of the door leading to the forward cargo compartment. It had actually become opened. A gap measuring 1 and a half inches, nearly 4 centimeters was exposing the inside of the plane to the outside, leading to failed pressurization.
An investigation into what had happened highlighted a design floor in the locking mechanism of the 747s cargo door that had been known for some time. Boeing was clearly aware of issues pertaining to the Cargo Door locks as they released a bulletin on the subject of “Fuselage Door, Hatches and Exits”. The incident was just one in a string of multiple others involving the Cargo Door and the rollout of changes needed to fix the issue on other planes would be slow, caught up in the web of economics. It was only a matter of time before it would strike again. So what was that design flaw?
February 24th, 1989. United Airlines Flight 811 was a Trans Pacific flight between Los Angeles and Sydney, Australia. Flight 811, operated at this time by a Boeing 747 made stopovers in Honolulu and Auckland.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/A...
https://aviation-safety.net/database/...
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/...
https://web.archive.org/web/201803032...
http://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-... --- Initial NTSB report that was revised. See top of sources for that report.