Airtran Fanatic
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New caution for pilots landing on wet runways
Recommendation comes after plane overran runway and boy died
Friday, January 27, 2006; Posted: 2:13 p.m. EST (19:13 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The National Transportation Safety Board is urging that commercial airplane pilots change the way they calculate stopping distances on slippery runways to avoid a crash, such as the one in Chicago that killed a child.
"We believe this recommendation needs the immediate attention of the FAA since we will be experiencing winter weather conditions in many areas of our nation for several more months to come," NTSB Acting Chairman Mark V. Rosenker was quoted in a news release issued by the board.
The NTSB wants the Federal Aviation Administration to prohibit airlines from calculating the effect of a plane's thrust reversers into the formula that figures what distance is needed to land when runways are slick.
The urgent recommendation comes from an NTSB investigation into what caused a Southwest Airlines flight, landing at Midway Airport in a snowstorm on December 8, to roll off the end of the runway -- where it tore through two fences and stopped in an intersection, hitting two cars. A 6-year-old boy in one of the cars was killed.
The pilots had used a laptop computer to calculate how far the plane needed to go to land, the NTSB said. When the runway's condition was entered as "wet-poor," the computer calculated they would be able to stop with 30 feet to spare.
But the calculations took into consideration that engine thrust reversers would be deployed at touchdown. Instead, the NTSB said, "flight data recorder information revealed that the thrust reversers were not deployed until 18 seconds after touchdown, at which point there was only about 1,000 feet of usable runway remaining."
Without the thrust reversers, the calculation would have shown a safe landing was not possible, it said.
"As a result," the board said in its recommendation letter to the FAA, "a single event, the delayed deployment of the thrust reversers, can lead to an unsafe condition, as it did in this accident."
The NTSB said the FAA already prohibits the inclusion of thrust reversers in calculations in some cases.
Recommendation comes after plane overran runway and boy died
Friday, January 27, 2006; Posted: 2:13 p.m. EST (19:13 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The National Transportation Safety Board is urging that commercial airplane pilots change the way they calculate stopping distances on slippery runways to avoid a crash, such as the one in Chicago that killed a child.
"We believe this recommendation needs the immediate attention of the FAA since we will be experiencing winter weather conditions in many areas of our nation for several more months to come," NTSB Acting Chairman Mark V. Rosenker was quoted in a news release issued by the board.
The NTSB wants the Federal Aviation Administration to prohibit airlines from calculating the effect of a plane's thrust reversers into the formula that figures what distance is needed to land when runways are slick.
The urgent recommendation comes from an NTSB investigation into what caused a Southwest Airlines flight, landing at Midway Airport in a snowstorm on December 8, to roll off the end of the runway -- where it tore through two fences and stopped in an intersection, hitting two cars. A 6-year-old boy in one of the cars was killed.
The pilots had used a laptop computer to calculate how far the plane needed to go to land, the NTSB said. When the runway's condition was entered as "wet-poor," the computer calculated they would be able to stop with 30 feet to spare.
But the calculations took into consideration that engine thrust reversers would be deployed at touchdown. Instead, the NTSB said, "flight data recorder information revealed that the thrust reversers were not deployed until 18 seconds after touchdown, at which point there was only about 1,000 feet of usable runway remaining."
Without the thrust reversers, the calculation would have shown a safe landing was not possible, it said.
"As a result," the board said in its recommendation letter to the FAA, "a single event, the delayed deployment of the thrust reversers, can lead to an unsafe condition, as it did in this accident."
The NTSB said the FAA already prohibits the inclusion of thrust reversers in calculations in some cases.
