Why Do Southwest Flights Keep Dropping?
Since April, there have been three Southwest Airlines (SWA) flights that have had serous drops in altitude that, at least as far as the media I have seen, no one seems to be tying the three together.
Air traffic control had to contact the SWA crew and ask them to check their altitude.
Like the Oklahoma City incident, air traffic control had to alert the pilots to their dangerously low altitude. 
The Tampa Bay Times' full story is here.
The first was off the Island of Kauai on April 11.
The plane was headed to the Lihue Airport. The radar shows solid thunderstorms in the area. According to news reports, in addition to the thunderstorm-caused turbulence, the flying pilot pushed the control column down and the plane dropped 400 feet. The thunderstorms are so widespread, one can question whether the plane should ever have taken off from Honolulu. It is against FAA regulations to fly into a thunderstorm, in addition to the thunderstorms appearing on the National Weather Service's radar (below), it would have clearly showed up on the pilot's own radar.
The second was under clear skies outside of Oklahoma City.
On Approach to Tampa International Airport
On July 14
Based on the flight path (according to FlightData, not shown), the plane flew through thunderstorms that easily could have been safely circumnavigated to the west. Below is the Tampa NWS radar as of 7:08pm. The incident occurred "shortly after 7."
However, the story is incorrect that weather conditions were unacceptable at the airport. The blue dot just above the "T" in Tampa is Tampa International Airport. The thunderstorms are to the north. The plane early could have swung to the west and then made an approach to the airport well south of the thunderstorms. Again, this plane flew into an area of thunderstorms which is against FAA regulations.
Also, of interest, each of these three incidents occurred with a SWA Boeing 737 MAX 8 Aircraft which is the type of plane that was grounded by the FAA after two fatal crashes outside of the United States. Whether the type of aircraft is pertinent in these three incidents is unknown.
Full disclosure: I have been short Boeing stock for a couple of months. That was before I had heard of the Hawaii incident and before this latest occurred.
Copyright 2024 Mike Smith Enterprises, LLC
It's not the plane, it's a loss of situational awareness by the crew. Few realize how easy it is for airline pilots to kinda just... lose track of where exactly they are. Modern avionics and flight management systems put the pilot in a supervisory role, handling all of the nav, the altitude, the throttles, all of it is programmed in, and programming is very abstract. It doesn't trigger an alert in the pilot's brain that, say they've been vectored around those storms and are off the expected arrivial track, when they're moving at 300kts and they're 15 miles from the airport, they're only 3 minutes away- five miles a minute. Modern jets don't slow down well, so now they have time compression to deal with, and nonstandard application of procedures.. Couple that with distraction and fatigue, and it's very easy for the pilots to get behind the aircraft. Part of it is trust; the systems work well pretty much all the time, so the first time when you lose track a little, you find that the plane has taken care of you. And the second. And the third. Complacency likely will play a role in this as well.
ReplyDeleteAgree with your comment, but why are these focused on Southwest Airlines?
Delete