Southwest Airlines Essay

ACCIDENT ANALYSIS #1

Executive Summary On December 8, 2005 at approximately 1915 Central Standard Time at Chicago Midway International airport, a Southwest Airlines flight a Boeing 737 flying as SWA 1248 with N471WN tail, ran off the departure end of the runway 31C at Chicago. The aircraft ran over the blast fence, exceeded the airport perimeter fence and stopped at a roadway adjacent to the airport after hitting an automobile in the roadway. This accident killed one child who was in the automobile, and injuring 3 other passengers in the automobile. Out of all the 108 travelers in the flight including 3 Flight attendants and 2 pilots, 18 people were seriously injured, and the rest suffered from minor injuries. Since the aircraft hit the blast

This failure occurred because of the pilots’ inexperience and lack of familiarity with the aircrafts newly installed autobrake system which took the pilot’s attention, thereby forgetting to use thrust reversals at the right time during tough landing conditions. The other contributing factors for the accident were, Southwest airlines failing to train their pilots on recent changes to their fleet, Southwest airlines not monitoring their on-board performance monitoring computers which did not properly calculate the landing distance which was critical in pilots’ decision making. And, not following the Southwest policy to divert whenever there is a cross wind of 10 knots and more. This accident happened due to the lack of engineering materials arresting system, which was needed in a runway which is very close to the

Even a standard EMAS would have stooped the aircraft from leaving the airport premises.

Recommendation

1. Aircrafts operating as Part 121 must conduct arrival landing distance assessments using performance data, with minimum safety margin of 15 percent.

2. Aircrafts operating as Part 121 must ensure that all electronic calculating devices must display their assumptions.

3. Airlines operating as Part 121 must ensure to train their pilots about various changes that is being done to their fleet type. Pilots must also be provided clear procedure on surface condition, and braking action required for specific runway.

4. Aircrafts operating as Part 121, must ensure that the pilot not flying must check and monitor the thrust reverser applied after touchdown on all landings.

5. Aircrafts operating as Part 121 must calculate arrival landing distance assessments based on the weather condition at the intended destination, before starting the final descent.

Urgent Safety