SWA lands at wrong Branson Airport

[SWA Bubba]

Bubba and Wave-

I don't think Nindiri is flaming; I think he is being sincere. Many of the pilots who have transitioned over have expressed surprise and dismay at the lack of use of some of the technology that makes operating in todays' ATC environment safer and easier. I'm betting you will see these becoming SOP at SWA, but they don't seem to be yet.

A couple of examples-

IAN approaches- much more stabilized approach for nonprecision approaches

Deselecting Speed Mode- instead of disconnecting autothrottles entirely, it retains Alpha floor protection

Level Change- Maintain ATC assigned speed while descending in the terminal area (unlike Vert Speed)

If you haven't sat on the jumpseat of another 737 operator to see how they are doing things, I would highly recommend it. You may be quite surprised.

PS, Wave spare me the stories about your hairy-chested manly flying skills. :laugh:

Thanks for your input, Ty, but sorry; I DO think he was flaming, because the specific examples he used were complete crap.

I can certainly agree that we can do some things better, and clearly anyone can learn from other operators' procedures. If it's better or safer, then we should definitely take that under our belt. And we DO learn and change as a result. All the damn time. Despite Nindiri's blanket denials.

Can we still do some things better? I'm sure we can. Can we learn from AirTran procedures (and other carriers)? Surely. I personally don't know what IAN approaches are, having never done one, but if they're better, hopefully the company will adopt them. The other examples you gave are already in practice here; I use them all the time.

Bubba

 

[Ty Webb]

Good to hear, Bubba.

 

[waveflyer]

And I agree with bubba Ty, but I do like our flying culture here- learning from others doesn't mean we don't do certain things very well and should retain them.

And I've actually flown for quite a few operators

And you haven't transitioned yet, right Ty? So how are you opinionated.

 

[waveflyer]

Because SWA is not "better" than the rest of the industry. Note I didn't say worse either. Airlines go through good periods or bad. Look at Delta in the 90's. Anyone thumping their chest about being better than anyone else is wrong. Right now SWA is making the news for all the wrong reasons, LGA and Branson. It could happen to any of us. We have a superior safety record than you. So what. It doesn't mean we are better. Hawaiian is doing a lot right right now, but I would hardly be smug about it.

Back to the AM's in row. Have you found that you can't do 3 days in a row of AM departures under the new regs? I don't do inter-island but that's what I heard.

No and that's all I was asking dan- the 117 part.
Yes, I'm not a typical AMer but most of January has been AMs and I've flown 3 days of 5-7am reports three times now since 117 came about

 

[Ty Webb]

And I agree with bubba Ty, but I do like our flying culture here- learning from others doesn't mean we don't do certain things very well and should retain them.

And I've actually flown for quite a few operators

And you haven't transitioned yet, right Ty? So how are you opinionated.

Um . . . . I've sat in the front. I've sat in the back. Many times. I saw with my eyes, I heard with my ears, and I felt with my ass. . . Oh, wait, that was the SLI. Never mind.

:laugh:

 

[waveflyer]

Resident expert then

Proceed (with your metro manscaped shaved chest)

 

[Nindiri]

Thanks for your input, Ty, but sorry; I DO think he was flaming, because the specific examples he used were complete crap.
/QUOTE]

I'm not sure why you're so defensive, Bubba, no one is accusing you of anything. But the fact remains that four incidents of the same type in less than 13 years is not random chance. And that's not even including the tail-strike incident since it was a relatively minor incident. You say we've analyzed each incident and made changes, yet the same incidents keep happening. How long do we want to tempt fate?

You can try to explain it away by blaming the airport or thrust levers being "slightly" out of idle, but the bottom line is that we, as a group, seem to have issues with putting an airplane down safely on the runway. We've broken three airplanes and narrowly averted a disaster in another. As Southwest pilots, we either look at what we're doing and fix it, or we're going to hurt someone. It's not about which airline has the safest pilots, it's about being professionals, and professionals don't blame thrust levers being slightly out of idle for overrunning a runway.

 

[waveflyer]

You sound like general lee repeating the argument that bubba already addressed rationally very well

 

[Nindiri]

And yet, the landing incidents continue.

But hey, let's just blame it on the airport like Bubba and hope we stay lucky.

 

[JT12345]

I'm claiming the only way to evaluate safety practices is to analyze the data about how each airlines practices mitigate accidents.

You guys need more gates on your profiles, so there are more red flags that a pilot can identify. Maybe they were added after LGA, but Branson proves otherwise from the outside looking in. If only you would read our books, and use more guidelines. Look at our FOQA data. It's free. You own it. I don't care if you admit it. Take it from a carrier that had to keep a low profile after the everglades and a few fires. Again I am not there yet, and I don't know what is really going on yet. When was the last time a green and white airplane made the news?

knock on wood

 

[SWA Bubba]

I'm not sure why you're so defensive, Bubba, no one is accusing you of anything. But the fact remains that four incidents of the same type in less than 13 years is not random chance. And that's not even including the tail-strike incident since it was a relatively minor incident. You say we've analyzed each incident and made changes, yet the same incidents keep happening. How long do we want to tempt fate?

You can try to explain it away by blaming the airport or thrust levers being "slightly" out of idle, but the bottom line is that we, as a group, seem to have issues with putting an airplane down safely on the runway. We've broken three airplanes and narrowly averted a disaster in another. As Southwest pilots, we either look at what we're doing and fix it, or we're going to hurt someone. It's not about which airline has the safest pilots, it's about being professionals, and professionals don't blame thrust levers being slightly out of idle for overrunning a runway.

Oh, I get it now...

I've asked you before without any answer from you, but now I've figured out what you mean. By the "same type," you mean any possible thing that can happen on landing. Got it. Because every incident that happens upon landing, to any airline, is all exactly the same, and should be addressed in exactly the same way.

I see... You're that friggin' simple.

I pointed out the vast differences between the incidents you referenced. But still, you're apparently too dense to see a difference. I explained in detail how those specific incidents were analyzed, what we learned, and what we changed to prevent those specific things from happening again. But still, you refuse to believe that we've changed anything--all you do is drone your mantra that we "need to change" before we hurt someone.

By the way, I agree with you that professionals don't "blame thrust levers" for incidents (I didn't; you clearly didn't understand what happened there), but professionals also know the difference between pilot incompetence/CRM issues (BUR), and external factors unknown to the pilot (MDW). Which you continue to proudly proclaim that you do not.

Personally, I think that you're just carrying this on to be a dick or something, but if you really don't see any difference between these incidents, and really don't see that Southwest has addressed the specific deficiencies identified, then you have absolutely no business being on the flightdeck of a commercial airliner. It's pretty clear that you don't know anything about our procedures.

Bubba

 

[SWA Bubba]

And yet, the landing incidents continue.

You DO realize that if we can only do one thing to ensure there's no possible "landing incident," then that would be to not ever land, right?

But hey, let's just blame it on the airport like Bubba and hope we stay lucky.

Hey, I put the blame where the NTSB put it. As opposed to you, who just insists that they're "all the same," and clearly the fault of a company who refuses to acknowledge any problem or change. You know, Nindiri, you should probably read more. You can start with the NTSB reports on these specific incidents, and see some of the differences and the recommendations made. You can then continue to the reports of the changes Southwest adopted as a result of the NTSB's recommendations and lessons learned. You might finish by actually reading the Southwest procedures that you're supposed to know. Just a thought.

Bubba

 

[Nindiri]

It would appear that your idea of corrective actions after an incident is to lash out at anyone who suggests we did something wrong. It doesn't seem to occur to you that a better idea is to step back and ask ourselves what it is we're doing that keeps setting good pilots up for these incidents. Why do our pilots keep trying to salvage bad approaches instead of going around? Why do they push landing performance to the limit, assuming nothing will go wrong with equipment or weather conditions, even when other flights are diverting or going around?

Honestly, Bubba, there is a better way than sticking your head in the sand and pretending that none of these things are happening. It doesn't make us worse pilots or a bad company to ask these questions.

 

[Nindiri]

Let's take the MDW crash, for example. The crew calculated their landing performance and determined that they had just enough runway to be legal and assumed that the braking action reports were still accurate, that the performance numbers in their computer was perfectly accurate despite the changing conditions, and assumed that nothing would go wrong with the equipment like, say, taking 18 seconds to get the thrust reversers deployed. Some flights diverted, this flight continued.

What are we doing that made them push it to the edge like that? Don't tell me that "corrective" actions were taken and it won't happen again, because it does keep happening.

 

[SWA Bubba]

It would appear that your idea of corrective actions after an incident is to lash out at anyone who suggests we did something wrong. It doesn't seem to occur to you that a better idea is to step back and ask ourselves what it is we're doing that keeps setting good pilots up for these incidents. Why do our pilots keep trying to salvage bad approaches instead of going around? Why do they push landing performance to the limit, assuming nothing will go wrong with equipment or weather conditions, even when other flights are diverting or going around?

Honestly, Bubba, there is a better way than sticking your head in the sand and pretending that none of these things are happening. It doesn't make us worse pilots or a bad company to ask these questions.

No, my idea of corrective accident is to analyze what happened, and talk about it, come up with the best fixes to mitigate the risks discovered. You know, what actually happened after these incidents. Your idea is to sit back and pontificate anonymously about how nobody but you seems to care about what's happening, and deny that anybody has done anything yet.

I'm not, nor have I ever pretended that "none of these things are happening." The only one in this conversation who's pretending "nothing has happened" is you, who pretends/believes/makes jokes that no one but himself seems to care about this, or has actually done anything about it. I'm sorry to hear about your lack of reading skills, or comprehension, because I've already explained to you, numerous times, that people ARE indeed "ask[ing] these questions." I don't know how I can explain it to you any clearer.

Bubba

 

[SWA Bubba]

Let's take the MDW crash, for example. The crew calculated their landing performance and determined that they had just enough runway to be legal and assumed that the braking action reports were still accurate, that the performance numbers in their computer was perfectly accurate despite the changing conditions, and assumed that nothing would go wrong with the equipment like, say, taking 18 seconds to get the thrust reversers deployed. Some flights diverted, this flight continued.

What are we doing that made them push it to the edge like that? Don't tell me that "corrective" actions were taken and it won't happen again, because it does keep happening.

"Push it to the edge"? Jesus, Nindiri, how do you even bring yourself to land anywhere? The MDW incident landing performance indicated (based on the information given) they had approximately 1,000' of stopping margin (out of a 6,500' runway), provided they put it down by the 1,500' mark. And that's with several built-in fudge factors. They put it down prior to that mark, and on speed. But you fault them for not diverting? Seriously? You think they should have diverted "just in case" several other, unrelated causal factors happened to occur? Why do we bother to even run the data? We should just ask you if you think it's "safe."

Bubba

 

[dicko]

Never mind. My fear of the Karma monster is too strong.

 

[Nindiri]

Again, you seem to be taking it personally and getting defensive. Relax, Bubba, no one is accusing you or anyone else of anything, it's simply an acknowledgement that we have some problems. You can spin it any way you want, but the stubborn fact is that we keep breaking airplanes, and these "corrective" actions you keep talking about obviously haven't fixed the problem. Four accidents of the same type in less than 13 years (not even counting the recent tail-strike) is not random chance. At some point, we are going to have to find out what we are doing that sets up good pilots for these mistakes.

 

[Nindiri]

"Seriously? You think they should have diverted "just in case" several other, unrelated causal factors happened to occur? Why do we bother to even run the data? We should just ask you if you think it's "safe."

Bubba

No, don't ask me, ask the other crews, including Southwest, who did divert that night.

 

[waveflyer]

I agree with bubba- these aren't the same "type" of incidents or accidents-

Why on earth would you think that Burbank is related to midway which is related to LGA which is related to Branson.

I find almost no commonality other than they occurred on landing-

Please let me know how landing at the wrong airport is related to LGA where a captain basically lost her mind took over an airplane at 100' and crashed? Neither are our group's finest hour and we all as an industry have a lot to dissect and learn from- but I see no systemic commonality- explain how you do

I don't believe you're a SWA pilot- bc if you are- you are too uninformed about the various factors to keep flying that seat- try not to be defensive about that, I just happen to think stupid people shouldn't be flying airplanes- but that's just my opinion.