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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Hearings open on Midway crash

Del Quentin Wilber Washington Post

WASHINGTON – The pilots of a Southwest Airlines jet that ran off a Chicago runway in December, killing a 6-year-old boy, were so concerned about deteriorating weather conditions that they contemplated diverting to another airport, according to documents and cockpit-voice-recorder transcripts released Tuesday.

But the pilots, apparently eager to land in Chicago, pressed ahead. They were unable to stop their Boeing 737 after touching down at Midway International Airport. The plane smashed through a fence and struck a car on a busy Chicago street the evening of Dec. 8. Joshua Woods, a passenger in the car, died.

The pilots’ actions are among the issues under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, which held its first public hearing on the crash Tuesday. The board is expected to issue its findings by the end of the year.

The crash highlighted the thin margin for error in landing on short and slick runways – a fact the pilots pondered as they flew from Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport with 98 passengers on board. No one on the plane was seriously injured.

In flight, the pilots received updates on the weather conditions at Midway, where snow had begun falling several hours earlier. They were told that the worst braking conditions on the runway were “fair” and “poor.”

When the pilots calculated stopping distances based on fair conditions, their onboard computers estimated they would stop the plane with about 500 feet of runway remaining, said NTSB investigator Bob Benzon.

The pilots’ computers indicated they would have about 30 feet to spare if the conditions were poor, reports show.

“Wow. Woo. If it’s poor, it’s scary,” said co-pilot Steven Oliver, 34, according to the transcript of the voice recorder.

“I ain’t doing it,” said the pilot, Bruce Sutherland, who had been with the airline for more than a decade.

The pilots considered diverting to other airports before they decided to continue to Midway, which was still accepting airline traffic.

Despite the tension of landing in such conditions, the pilots cracked jokes throughout the flight. Even as they approached Midway, the co-pilot stole a line from the 1980 movie “Airplane!” a satire about aviation disasters.

“Picked the wrong day to stop sniffin’ glue,” Oliver said.

Sutherland told investigators that as they touched down, he didn’t think a new automated braking system was working properly so he engaged the manual brakes. He also said he struggled to get the thrust reversers to work.

Thrust reversers redirect engine thrust to help slow down an airplane. The co-pilot was able to deploy them about 18 seconds after touching down. The plane then left the runway going about 45 miles per hour, investigators said Tuesday.

The NTSB found nothing wrong with the thrust reversers.

The pilots told investigators that they thought their onboard computers did not take the use of thrust reversers into consideration when calculating stopping distance. In fact, the computers on their 737 did include the thrust reversers in the calculation, meaning that the pilots got a false sense of how much cushion they had.

Oliver, the co-pilot, has been cleared to fly again by the Federal Aviation Administration and Southwest, according to a company spokeswoman. Sutherland remains grounded as the investigation continues.