But "it's not like the aircraft is going to drop out of the sky,"
Yeah, right. Unless under the broken wing skin were wires controlling the ailerons, in which case it could have been another Iowa UA Flight 232 cornfield crash.
After Sioux City, plane mfrs began putting their redundant systems in different locations. This way a repeat of the engine shrapnel taking out all 3 hydraulic lines to the rudder simultaneously would be far less likely.
This plane load of people could p[ossibly have been saved because of new design procedures developed as a result of that crash and its ensuing investigation.