![]() Pilots speak of certain airports as challenging, which is a wholly different thing. If one were, no airline would be flying there. Because it is an airline decision, Boeing has no data on how often it is used, she said.Maybe you’ve seen those “world’s scariest landings” and “world’s most dangerous airports” lists that pop up time to time on the Web and elsewhere? Take them with a grain of salt, because no commercial airport is unsafe. The Boeing 737 is FAA-certified to operate with or without the automatic braking system in use, Boeing spokeswoman Sandra Angers told Bloomberg News. That is a procedural choice available to each airline.” “We let our flight crews make the determination to brake the aircraft. “We do not deploy automatic braking at this point at Southwest Airlines,” said Kelly. Southwest confirmed it doesn’t use the systems. The Boeing 737-700 that crashed at Midway was equipped with automatic braking and anti-skid systems. Rose said Southwest had decided to disconnect its automatic braking system as a “cost-saving method.” Rose said the crashes might be indicative of a “carrierwide operational problem.” Southwest couldn’t immediately say where on the runway the plane touched down.Īviation lawyer Daniel O. “You can probably rule out any mechanical problem,” said Jeff Morof, a Chicago aviation attorney. Some safety experts say they also are interested in where the pilot touched down on the runway. “We’ve operated at Midway for 20 years without incident.”Įarly speculation on the cause of the accident centered on the runway’s length since the airplane barreled into traffic. “It is certainly an adequate runway,” Kelly said. Pilots consider the Midway runway relatively short at 6,500 feet, compared with 8,800 at Love Field. “It’s a problem for older airports that never had a lot of space to begin with. commercial airports don’t have the 1,000-foot safety margins recommended by the Federal Aviation Administration – including some at Midway and Dallas’ Love Field.įAA spokeswoman Laura Brown says the shorter runways are still considered safe.īut that smaller safety margin becomes more apparent during bad weather, such as the storm that left nearly 8 inches of snow on Chicago on Thursday. Part of the problem is many runways at U.S. All 142 passengers and crewmembers survived that accident, although several dozen were treated for injuries. On March 5, 2000, a Southwest 737 overran a runway at Burbank Airport in Southern California, crashing through the blast fence and stopping within feet of a gasoline station. Most of those injured were in vehicles at the intersection adjacent to the city airport. Thirteen people were injured in the accident. “The more you have businesses and public areas encroaching, the less space you have for airplanes to run off before they hit something,” said Hans Weber, president of aviation technology management consulting company Pecop International Inc. The shorter runways at many older airports leave less room for either error or bad luck with the weather. ![]() “It is a sad day for Southwest, and we are going to focus all of our efforts on taking care of our passengers and their families and supporting the NTSB investigation,” airline chief executive Gary Kelly said during a news conference at company headquarters in Dallas.Īs discount carriers like Southwest look to hold down costs by using secondary airports such as Chicago Midway, pilots are increasingly finding themselves in tight quarters when they’re landing big jets. Officials for the National Transportation Safety Board cautioned Friday that it’s far too soon to determine an official cause for the accident, the second incident of its kind in recent years for the Dallas-based carrier. The relatively short runways at Chicago Midway Airport also likely played a role in the incident, in which a Boeing 737-700 smashed through a blast fence Thursday and skidded onto a busy street, killing a 6-year-old boy. DALLAS – Investigators looking into the accident that resulted in Southwest Airlines Co.’s first crash fatality appeared to be focused initially on a blustering snowstorm as a potential factor.
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