Southwest Midway crash. What ever happened?

[Rally]

Regarding the Southwest airlines Midway crash....what ever happened to the pilots the NTSB report tends to put most of the blame on the airline. Also did they ever install a arresting system as the report suggests?

 

[firstthird]

The captain was within a few months of retiring and did not get a chance to fly again. The FO is flying again at SWA. the aircraft is flying again too, although with a new side number.

There is now EMAS (engineered material arresting system?) at the ends of the 4 main runway directions (31C, 13C, 22L, 4R). EMAS = crushable concrete, or so I've been told.

Significant changes were made to the assumptions that the OPC (onboard performance computer) uses with regards to tailwind components, headwind components, and some slop factor was added in (much like dispatches' landing calculations).

We even have used 13C a few times since the accident, which almost NEVER happened before due to O'Hare traffic.

Supposedly we are going to get some fancy next gen RNP ability to shoot approaches to 22L and 13C with the final segment beginning at 500 agl, thus allowing us to always shoot an approach into the wind rather than circling or accepting minimal headwinds on 31C or 4R. Probably be few more years for that.

The big outstanding issue is the lack of REAL correlation between friction reports and actual braking performance. Apparently the trucks that airports use don't have much relevance compared to a large jetliner. Also, pilots tend to call good based on our Thrust reverser performance (good in the middle, fair on the end = fair the entire length but the pilot was using engines to slow from 120 to 80 and it only seemed 'FAIR' once they actually started using brakes) rather than true braking performance. Supposedly the FAA/NTSB/ATA/ industry are working on better braking reports but I suspect it will be awhile. Checking one braking report condition lower might not be a bad idea while you're calculating your performance for wet-good.

 

[Rally]

Too bad they can't have some sort of computer that coorelates the braking pressure the amount of TR and how quickly the aircraft is slowing down to get a real braking performance. It is so much up to interpretation. You could do this with the aircraft or preferably with with the ground truck.

 

[Fubijaakr]

I've noticed a LOT more 737 pilots using autobrakes since this accident. I know I do.

 

[firstthird]

I think that accident investigation team suggested that we (aviation industry) need to have a way to capture actual deceleration rates. Some way to link up the GPS/FADAP type information into an actual performance. right now we're all just guessing.

they actually had max autobrakes selected and they worked but there wasn't enough friction for the brakes to do all the decelerating w/o the help of the thrust reversers at the higher speeds.

We're definitely using autobrakes more here at SWA, but since we had just turned them on (or not) the day of the accident, we only used them before that for RTO.

 

[Rally]

This might sound like a pipe dream. But what they need is that type of equipment and sensors on the truck. Wonder if the airport has been shut down for hours due to weather? You might be the first to land. Sounds like the truck is unreliable currently. If they could design something for the truck that would be the best idea along with the actual aircraft.

 

[AvroJockey]

The FO is flying again at SWA.

Good to hear that...He's a stand-up guy!