December 10, 2005
Accident Investigation Looks at Where Jet Touched Down on Runway
By JEFF BAILEY and MATTHEW L. WALD
CHICAGO, Dec. 9 - The Southwest Airlines plane that slid off the end of a runway here on Thursday night, killing a 6-year-old boy in a car, apparently touched down closer to the end of the runway than normal on a snowy night, an official who was briefed on the accident said Friday. The landing came after other pilots had reported that the best traction was near the runway's start, the official said.
The plane, a Boeing 737-700, with 98 passengers and a crew of 5, arrived at Midway International Airport from Baltimore at 7:15 p.m. It landed with a 13-mile-an-hour tail wind, making its speed over the ground - 124 knots, or 142 m.p.h. - slightly faster than normal, Ellen Engleman Conners, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is conducting the accident investigation, said at a news conference here on Friday afternoon. It hit the fence at 40 knots, or 46 m.p.h., and then hit two cars.
Despite the fact that heavy snow was falling at the time, braking was fair on most of the 6,522-foot runway but poor near the end, Ms. Engleman Conners said. "We cannot tell you the specific touchdown point."
The official briefed on the accident, who would not comment publicly because only top safety board officials are allowed to speak for attribution, said, "The first section of the runway had the best braking, and the last section had the worst."
A spokeswoman for the Chicago Aviation Department, Wendy Abrams, said a friction tester was sent down the runway about 20 minutes before the plane, Southwest Flight 1248, landed, and again right after it touched down. Each time, she said, "Braking action on that runway was good."
The investigation could take up to a year, and explanations of airplane accidents often change over time.
On Friday afternoon, hours after the snow had ended here, the plane sat nose down, its front landing gear collapsed, near the intersection of West 55th Street and Central Avenue on the southwest side of the city, as officials from the safety board, the airline and the Federal Aviation Administration began work.
Ronald A. Stearney, a Chicago lawyer who said he represented the family of the boy killed, Joshua Woods of Leroy, Ind., gave this account:
Leroy and Lisa Woods and their three young sons "were driving north on Central approaching 55th Street," Mr. Stearney said. "They'd just been to a McDonald's, and they had some food in the car." Joshua, Mr. Stearney said, was singing to the radio when his father heard a roar and thought a plane was taking off. The next instant he heard a boom.
"It crashes through the fence, turbine engine roaring right outside his window," Mr. Stearney said. "I'm surmising: that nose wheel might have crushed into the car."
Mr. Woods pulled his 4-year-old out of the back seat but had to wait for the Fire Department to free Joshua and his year-old brother. Joshua was pronounced dead at the scene.
A neighbor of the Woodses in Indiana, Marty Embry, said the family had moved next door about a year ago. Mr. Woods, a truck driver, is "always out there playing with the kids," Mrs. Embry said.
Midway Airport, built more than 75 years ago to accommodate propeller planes, sits on one square mile among rows of modest bungalows and commercial buildings, unique among major domestic airports in its proximity to its neighborhood. Runway 31C, where the accident occurred, is squeezed in diagonally across the airport.
Southwest would not comment on the possible cause of the accident, the first fatality in the airline's 35-year history.
In May 2003, the transportation safety board recommended that all airports have at least a 1,000-foot buffer at the end of every runway. At airports where that is not possible, like Midway, it recommended a device called an arrestor bed, essentially concrete that deforms under the weight of a plane's wheels and acts like flypaper for aircraft that cannot stop in time.
The recommendation was made partly in response to a Southwest accident in 2000, when a 737 went off the end of a runway in Burbank, Calif., and nearly hit a gas station.
Last February, a corporate jet ran off the end of a runway at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, injuring 13. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said it would install an arrestor bed.
The F.A.A. has a "grandfather" rule that allows existing runways with no overrun area or arrestor bed. It can require installation, however, if the runway is repaved or undergoes other major improvements.
But after the Teterboro crash, with uncertainty about when overrun areas or arrestor beds would be installed, Senator Frank J. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, successfully amended the 2006 transportation appropriations bill to require that all runway ends at commercial airports meet the standard by 2015. President Bush signed the bill on Nov. 30.
According to Joe Del Balzo, an aviation consultant in Washington who markets the only product that has been certified by the F.A.A. for this use, about 600 runway ends in the United States do not meet the standard. Perhaps 220 are in spots where there is no space for the standard 1,000-foot safety area, he said. Mr. Del Balzo, who was acting administrator of the F.A.A. in the mid-1990's, said that the devices were engineered to slow an airplane by 70 knots, which is just over 80 m.p.h., but that in especially tight spots the reduction might be less. The average price per runway end is $4 million, he said. Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting from Chicago for this article.
