Southwest Accident May Be Indicative of Carrier-Specific Problem

[Capt. X]

We all luv to Monday Quarterback, but this could have been a number of problems..ie..Auto Brake malfunction, Grd Spoiler malfunction, reverser malfunction, anti-skid malfunction and upon landing possible Braking Action at Nil. We just have to wait and see. I am a little confused on how it will take a year to figure this out, at least that's what the NTSB has said. I assume the intrumentation perameter part of the Black Box can yield this information much sooner than a year IMHO.

 

[Creamer]

SWA has an awesome safety record and this goes to show that an accident can happen to any airline at any time. One of the sections the NTSB will look at is the ops manual for the airline. It is my understanding that it is SWA policy that all approaches are flown by hand. Can somebody comfirm this? A common mistake on hand flown, low visibility approaches is to get high on glideslope when getting into the ground rush. The lights and snow do not help either. A long landing on a short, snow covered runway is a recipe for disaster. I will be curious to see if the NTSB will cite this company policy of hand flying all approaches as a contributing factor if the aircraft did indeed land long. Anybody can have a bad day. Fly safe everyone.

 

[temcgrew]

So two over-runs make it a "company" problem? I would believe that if anyone could show me that southwest is the only airline to ever slide off the end of those runways at those two airports.

come on, how many flights per day do they do out of there? We see one over-run without the NTSB's findings on the matter and some lawyer wants to blame it on the company?

 

[Draginass]

Some of the airports that SW prefer to fly out of are inherently unsafe and should be closed. Midway is one of them.

 

[str8upflyrght]

Some of the airports that SW prefer to fly out of are inherently unsafe and should be closed. Midway is one of them.

Out of curiosity, in your opinion what are the other ones?

 

[BOZO]

Anybody know how to Baptize a lawyer?
>
>
>

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Hold his head underwater until the bubbles stop.

 

[Ty Webb]

That is unfortunate and SWA will pay as they should, but this appears to be just what it is, an accident, nothing more, nothing less. Not some conspiracy to not use safety equipment. Things like this are going to happen but most of us train to minimalize the effects of these type issues.

Hawker F/O, thanks for summarizing it for the rest of us . . . nice job. Maybe SWA will get proactive on these ass-clowns and file a suit for libel and defamation . . . seems to me that they are skating very close to the edge . . . Lawyer activities like this have a particularly particularly odious and noxious reek to them.

 

[sf260pilot]

Let's close all unsafe airports!

Some of the airports that SW prefer to fly out of are inherently unsafe and should be closed. Midway is one of them.

Ironic that the last notable accident at MDW happened 33 years to the day. 33 years and two air carrier accidents. Close the damn airport...While your out closing another Chicagoland airport, there is one down in Dallas that had two accidents with a-lot more fatalities in the span of 3 years. Why don't you close that one too. (By the way, it is DFW not Love!)

 

[LegacyDriver]

How do auto brakes work on a 737 and what effect on stopping distance do they have on a contaminated runway?

 

[The_Russian]

I push for the blame to be shifted to umpa lumpas. I believe there was lucious chocolate sprayed on the runway surface prior to touchdown.

 

[LegacyDriver]

I forgot to mention... God bless the little boy who was killed, his family, and the crew. I have a six year old son myself nd the thought of losing him is awful in the exTreme. I feel for the pilots. I am sur they must be miserable.

The Captain steered for the corner to avoid the street for as long as possible after the end of the pavement. Another 20 feet is all he needed...

 

[BHS]

Bozo & Russian, great quotes, I was on the floor laughing. Happy Landings!

 

[wrxpilot]

Mr. Rose indicated that, as a cost-savings method, SWA had also decided to disconnect an automatic braking system, which would have stopped the aircraft on the runway in Burbank.

There's a reason I got out of accident investigation (for land based vehicles) and into design engineering. Way too much speculation for my comfort level in this stuff.

Anyway... Didn't the NTSB report for Burbank say that it was NOT possible for the SWA/Burbank a/c to stop in the available rwy dist after touchdown?

Ok, here it is from the NTSB report:
http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2002/AAB0204.pdf

"At the request of the Safety Board.s Airplane Performance Group, Boeing ran stopping
distance simulations for this accident wherein maximum, medium, and minimum 737 autobrake
applications, as well as maximum manual brake applications, were simulated for wet runway
conditions after the 182-knot touchdown. These data indicate that the accident airplane would
have required about 5,000 feet of runway length after touchdown to stop using maximum
autobrakes and about 4,700 feet of runway length after touchdown to stop using maximum
manual brakes. Boeing stopping distance calculations based on FDR acceleration data show that
the accident airplane traveled about 4,150 feet from touchdown to impact with the blast fence,
indicating that the airplane touched down about 2,150 feet beyond the runway 8 threshold in the
TDZ"

WTF?? So Mr. Rose knows something that the Boeing engineers don't. LOL... Like I said, there's a very good reason I got out of the accident reconstruction business.​

 

[stonewall]

What do y'all think of this:

Flew into Huntington one night with a very young 727 FDX captain. Short runway, bad wx. very low vis. He flat out told me, "okay, bra, I'm gonna fly this ILS one dot low the whole way down. It'll put us exactly where I wanna be on the runway." Sounded good to me. The dude flew a great approach exactly like he said he was gonna fly it, and we landed about 1000' feet down and stopped in plenty o' time. I liked it, since most military pilots like to land in the first 500' anyway. How do my civvie bros feel about something like the approach above? Just curious.

 

[sf260pilot]

Don't F it up because a dot low will be shown in the report as pilot error.