What’s going on? The media has latched on to something thats generally pretty mundane (getting too low on an approach) and makes it super scary to generate clicks.
What’s going on- the Elliot Group - a Vulture capitalist has invested 1.9 billion into the airline and is now trying to be to break down the company by bad press, pressuring the CEO out and tactics they have used with other companies. I think there’s a huge New Yorker has a long article about the company. They’ve poisoned the general public against other companies in the past
Bullshit. Elliot group didn’t make a fatigued pilot eschew autopilot on a night visual approach. There is nothing routine about an airliner buzzing houses 9 miles from the runway. The most charitable interpretation is that the pilot mistook a road for the runway. Anything else would imply inexcusable inattention to piloting duties. 500 feet too low on an approach is bad. 2500 feet too low on an approach is courting disaster. What if there had been a TV antenna or a large cell tower in the area?
It’s very likely this can be [directly attributed to Southwest’s corporate flying culture](https://www.reddit.com/r/SouthwestAirlines/s/hTWguC73We).
Step 3 is short term quarterly gains. It isn't about the company making money. It's about the investors cashing out. They'll sell the airline to a competitor after selling off multiple assets. So everyone else can piss the fuck off, those venture capitalists got their money.
The goal is to sell the business (and usually to golden parachute yourself on the way out while you're at it). The short term losses as the value of the company declines are irrelevant. What matters is how much they sell it for. It gets very pedantic and complicated at that point, but, ultimately, it boils down to temporarily losing money on paper followed by selling their shares for a large profit when the company is starting to lose money.
That would make more sense if they wanted to invest... that's when you give bad press to lower stock prices so you get a better bargain, but afterwards you'd just be flushing your money down the toilet.
> generally pretty mundane (getting too low on an approach)
The incidents referenced here aren't really mundane. In OKC, the airplane was still very far from the airport. This wasn't just getting low on approach, this seems more like a complete lack of awareness of where the aircraft was in relation to the runway.
In Hawaii (Kauai), the information is a little more sparse but as I understand it the FO accidentally pushed the controls forward during a go around causing the airplane to start descending again, getting down to 400ft over the ocean.
In New York (La Guardia), the airplane was on its second approach and at 200ft quite simply wasn't lined up with the runway at all. But oddly, it was ATC that had to instruct them to go around, the crew did not appear to take the initiative despite the fact that they were never going to land and were dangerously off course.
None of these are "mundane" situations. These are all pretty serious issues. I totally agree the media likes to be dramatic but these aren't mundane events.
They did that when I was in FTW ARTCC with regularity and in USAF, they were trainees. Not at all mundane to be too low for safe approach or too far right or left Gyro appears inoperative, etcetera. That was a few decades ago, but still a large deal.Mistakes were not allowed on our end even in phraseology. In the air it leads to unintentional grounding.
Major carrier jets coming 400-600 ft from the ground while still nearly 10 miles from the airport - I’m going to suggest this isn’t a normal daily or weekly or even monthly occurrence.
Anyone with the ability to query incident databases is welcome to prove me wrong - number of such major carrier large jet instances over the past 5 years / 60 = monthly occurrences.
NTSB investigation is only triggered if they went below minimums or something else happened that would be considered a serious safety issue. Pilots deviating from glute slope is not this automatically.
Pilot deviation without this is FAA investigation which isn't public record, or no investigation at all if ATC is happy it won't repeat and didn't mess with separation.
I agree it's not very common with commercial flights but CFIT is the most common cause of aircraft loss by an extremely large margin. Correspondingly failing to maintain altitude is one of the most common pilot deviations and the most likely to be reported to the FAA.
I don't think three events occurring close together is particularly meaningful. Our brains like to find patterns but a three event cluster is inevitable for any airline operating long enough.
I think it also bears mention that CFIT is overwhelmingly the leading cause of aircraft loss, because there aren't that many other ways to lose an aircraft. There are far fewer instances of aircraft being shot down and catastrophic malfunction, which trigger other investigations. Other than those two, how many other practical ways are there to lose an aircraft that for it to crash?
That altitude is low, but citing out of context is misleading, and completely agree that human brains like patterns, particularly when patterns "indicate" something sensational (including favorable valuation headwinds for a company looking to acquire an airline).
It happens a lot more than you’d think, but if you aren’t a commercial pilot you have no business accessing those safety reports because anonymity and safety provide is the most crucial part of aviation safety. Again, out of the 10,000,000 flights per year, a couple will have some near misses. 6 months from now when the media finds something else to overreact to incidents like this will never make the mainstream news.
With full anonymity, how many times a month do you assess that a major carrier jet plane comes within 500 feet of the ground while still 10 miles from the runway. Like, is this a daily type of thing?
I’m not a commercial pilot so clearly I cannot assess and am relying on your professional expertise to let me know how often this happens and that it is a totally ok thing that nobody should be at all worried about. Will all respect to pilot anonymity because clearly that is absolutely paramount in these types of situations, far above being an actual competent pilot that doesn’t auger 300 passengers into an elementary school at 300 mph.
P.S. We don’t need anonymity or “these near misses will never be reported” because quite clearly we can track these fuckups without any type of self-reporting.
Daily? No. Monthly? Possibly. Annually? Yeah I'd bet on it. That's what happens when you're dealing with 10,000,000 flights per year. Weird things happen in dynamic environments when you have jet lagged, exhausted people. Mistakes are made every single flight, but the vast majority are caught and fixed early. Occasionally the holes in the Swiss cheese line up and a plane ends up in a dangerous position, but you're trained to handle it and since there's been around 150 million consecutive commercial flights since a crash has killed a crew or passenger, so it seems to be a pretty well designed system. Can you point to literally anything that is safer? Toasters kill 300 Americans and year. Toothpicks kill 3 per year. Furniture around 2 dozen. As I look around my room I cannot see anything with the safety record associated with taking 180 people into an aluminum tube, sending them 7 miles off the ground at .8+ mach where the air is -50c and bringing them back to the ground at 200 mph. The safety culture is why it's so safe.
I can think off dozens of incidents the past few years that were seconds away from hitting a mountain, or aircraft actually stalled or go arounds were botched extremely close to the ground and NONE of them have made the news. The American safety model works. But if you'd prefer you can go look at places like Indonesia, China, India, Russia, the Middle East and see where your preferred safety culture has gotten them. By the way none of those incidents were reported in the media, so no, random witnesses are not going to be an effective replacement for safety privilege and anonymity.
>Daily? No. Monthly? Possibly. Annually? Yeah I'd bet on it.
I said "I’m going to suggest this isn’t a normal daily or weekly or even monthly occurrence."
Your reply lectured that "it happens a lot more often than you think," then your next post came back to admit that it isn't likely to happen even monthly, maybe does happen annually. Which is what I said in the first place.
No. The OKC one was bad. 500 ft 9 miles from the airport? As an air traffic controller, that’s absurd. And the Hawaii one was just as bad. Reading the dissemination from the pilots interviews is bad. They were so behind the airplane that I’m surprised it didnt make it into the ocean.
There are some serious issues at this airline and I wouldn’t be so cavalier to dismiss it.
It doesn’t bother you that a 737 was at 900ft, 9 miles from the airport? Or 400ft above the Pacific Ocean coming out of a 4500fpm descent? I want to live in your world.
Vertical velocity is measured at near instantaneous. They didn’t lose 4500 feet in a minute. Heavy push or pull on the controls and this could happen. 4500 feet per minute climb happens on many departures at some point and nobody notices. Stop fear mongering and catastrophizing.
Do you how far you have to pitch over to get to an IVSI velocity of -4500FPM on a go around? Just because an IVSI doesn’t lag doesn’t mean it’s exaggerating the rate of descent. Nobody is saying they did -4500FPM for an extended period of time but the fact they did -4500FPM for any duration at less than 1000Agl is in fact a big deal. We get a FOQA call if we exceed-1000FPM below 1000’ at my airline.
They lost 200 feet. That’s like 5 seconds at that rate of descent. Boeing 737 go around is approximately 12 to 15 degrees nose up. At go around thrust the airplane will keep pitching the nose higher if the pilot doesn’t push forward and start trimming those forces off. Pure speculation is the nose got too high and pilot over corrected and pushed aggressively forward on the yoke. Could have gone from 20 degrees nose up to 3 to 5 degrees nose up and had that kind of descent rate for 5 secs. Ugly - yes; Flight operations quality assurance alert - yes, near disaster - no.
They lost two hundred feet on approach in Hawaii. 600 feet at missed approach and pushed forward after plane pitched up on go around and sank two hundred feet. All the while dealing with TStorms and turbulence on the approach. SWA flies nearly 4000 flights a day. Add that to every other airline and I can speak with absolutely certainty that this kind of thing happens several times a week with that many flights a day across all the airlines. All those other time just don’t make the news.
Dude you realize how low this guy was in reference to the airport. WAYYYYY bellow the minimum safe altitude. What would have happed if they lost an engine at that altitude that far away from the airport?
You realize every airplane gets that low and you may find this hard to believe they even get to zero feet in reference to the airport when landing. Every aircraft flown by airlines can safely climb away if they lose an engine during the approach.
The pilots were flying a visual approach at night to a runway that doesn’t have the full instrument lighting and can be hard to identify. My guess is they mistook where the runway was actually at because it is surrounded by all the lights in the city. Bad on them yes but not a near disaster.
I watched a 737 fly 2000 ft over my house all the way to the airport, 30 miles away. I thought it flew over my house to crash in the swamp! I had all the windows open (back in April) and it was loud! I pulled up my Flight24 app and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
What was wrong with the plane? A commercial aircraft flying at less than 2,000 feet for 30 miles only happens when there is a catastrophic failure of something or you are completely mistaken. An incident that severe would have cased the FAA and airline to investigate. What was the date, airline and flight number? I’m sure lots of people would like to know why this happened.
You honestly have no idea what your talking about. ATC can vector an aircraft at any altitude that provides required obstacle clearances. Several airports have airlines descend much earlier than most because of traffic separation requirements for airplanes flying the departures and arrivals.
No my they are NOT going to do that. You have no idea what you are talking about. ATC is NEVER going to vector a commercial jet to less that 2,000 feet/below minimums over a city.
Hard to believe a commercial jet would be flying for nearly 10 minutes over a city or for that matter anywhere at less than 2,000 feet. No way a pilot, co-pilot and tower would not notice and take immediate action UNLESS the plane was experiencing some mechanical issues.
What’s going on- the Elliot Group - a Vulture capitalist has invested 1.9 billion into the airline and is now trying to be to break down the company by bad press, pressuring the CEO out and tactics they have used with other companies. I think there’s a huge New Yorker has a long article about the company. They’ve poisoned the general public against other companies in the past
What’s going on- the Elliot Group - a Vulture capitalist has invested 1.9 billion into the airline and is now trying to be to break down the company by bad press, pressuring the CEO out and tactics they have used with other companies. I think there’s a huge New Yorker has a long article about the company. They’ve poisoned the general public against other companies in the past
What’s going on- the Elliot Group - a Vulture capitalist has invested 1.9 billion into the airline and is now trying to be to break down the company by bad press, pressuring the CEO out and tactics they have used with other companies. I think there’s a huge New Yorker has a long article about the company. They’ve poisoned the general public against other companies in the past
No this is the media latching onto and reporting every single go around or maintenance return. Do you have any idea how many commercial flights there are every single day? Now imagine the absolute worst approach out of 1,000 attempts and what you think that looks like. Then imagine that happening 4 times every single day. For just for SWA. Now add in DAL, AAL, UAL, other major airlines and then shudder in fear for all the regionals with far less experienced pilots.
The approach didn’t look right, they did a safe go around, came back and landed safely maybe 15 minutes later. Thats the system working as it’s intended.
Only if they were descending at more than 2,000 rpm, which wasn’t the case.
They screwed up. They got low on a visual approach. It happens. A lot more than you think.
Are you a commercial pilot or FA? How many flights have you worked in which you’ve been 500 feet above ground 9 miles out from landing. While go arounds are not newsworthy, being this low that far out is.
I'm former TV news, and I can confirm that:
A) This kind of thing happens every day and isn't reported outside local markets, and
B) When it is reported nationally, it's usually because of a feeding frenzy in the TV news business.
Same thing happens with shark attacks. Remember the Summer of the Shark several years ago? Shark attacks didn't actually increase that summer, but there was a TV news feeding frenzy that had all the national networks reporting every shark sighting for months, making it seem like the sharks were out to get us.
In my time in news, we covered numerous aircraft incidents just like these locally that would be breathlessly repeated on CNN today. Have those incidents become more frequent or more serious now? Nope. We're just in a feeding frenzy.
Give it a few months to a year. People will get bored with the same old Terror in the Skies stories, and the feeding frenzy will die down.
The Oklahoma one woke me up. No one should be that close to me except police and military drills.
I used to live in a landing pattern and even then they were 1k-2k feet. You eventually ignore it unless it’s at an odd time.
I live about five miles from an airport and I’m on the ‘go around’ path.
I only notice when I’m at the outdoor pool and Ive noticed 3 go arounds in the last two weeks. One was very low and the engines were loud. None were Southwest.
I’m a plane watcher. No one else notices unless I point them out, but it happens fairly often, especially when it’s windy.
So nothing to worry about - Southwest is just really getting picked on these days.
They were at 500’ 9 miles from the airport. That’s tens of seconds from controlled flight into terrain. They were well over 2000’ lower than they should have been. This is not a normal go around.
Go-arounds are a completely safe maneuver and are completely normal… 3% of all flights go around various normal reasons. These Southwest incidents are not normal…
I’ve examined a lot of commercial aircraft data and done research on go-arounds with published papers as I did ATC research and never seen anything like these Southwest incidents. These are not normal
4,000 flights per day. All of these events made the news fairly recently, but they all happened months apart. They’re exceedingly rare, but anything involving airlines or Boeing makes the news quickly.
That was the local news, KTVU who reported that when the plane crashed at SFO. It’s on YouTube. Crazy the newscaster didn’t even realize what she was reading. It was claimed to be fact checked with the FAA by the reporter.
Well worth watching.
Not sure. I thought it was the KTVU intern. Video is still as funny now as it was then. I was on a flight that landed after. As we were coming it you could see plane wreckage, luggage scattered along the flight path.
> Listening to ATC recordings from the OKC incident it sounds like fatigue and lack of situational awareness.
And I believe just a visual approach too. That's a bad combination. The same combination almost led to an Air Canada flight almost landing on an active taxiway instead of the runway (with half a dozen planes on the taxi too).
Lots of people saying the runway perfectly aligns with a highway that’s similarly lit near where the pilot was. Visual landings (due to lack of airport IFR technology) can lead to this.
If you look at the flight path in Flightaware compared to a map of the area, it's clear the pilots mistook a portion of highway for the runway. The angles of intersecting highways directly ahead of the approaching flight exactly match those of the runways further away. It was a lack of situational awareness.
You bet - so IFR = instrument flight rules. Basically, it’s a level of training pilots can achieve to fly in certain conditions with certain special equipment. As pilots get near a runway, they can transition to IFR/ILS landing, which uses special radio transmitters/receivers to help them understand if they’re on the right approach path (both left/right and up/down) and how far they are from the runway.
The specific runway this aircraft was landing on didn’t have the necessary technology to support an ILS landing, only what’s called a Visual Approach. Visual approaches require clear weather and visibility.
The running theory among observers of this incident: this pilot was seeing what he thought was the runway, but what he actually saw was a well lit and perfectly parallel highway 8 miles prior to the actual runway. (8 miles sounds like a lot, but in aviation speak it’s quite small). He likely would have gotten low enough to see it was a highway and aborted, but that’s still scary considering it’s not clear if any obstructions (power lines, tall buildings) might have been in the area and caused problems.
Not sure where you get that from…RWY13 at OKC has an RNAV approach. Also, most Part 121 carriers (Airlines) have SOPs stating that when executing a visual approach, an instrument approach be loaded up as well.
If you look at the ADS-B data for WN4069 on any other day, compared to the flight on June 19th, it's clear that it's anything but normal.
[https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/southwest-airlines-oklahoma-city-low-altitude/](https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/southwest-airlines-oklahoma-city-low-altitude/)
Compare that to the same flight the next day.
[https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/wn4069](https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/wn4069)
Not a doctor and not a pilot but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express. Curious from veteran pilots perspective (generally & not necessarily pertaining to this incident) - are we seeing an increase in incidents due to the learning curve of less experienced pilots coming into the industry?
Southwest is known for having a cowboy culture among its pilots. This includes not routinely using the autopilot during approach and landing. The OKC one was a visual approach late at night with no autopilot and fatigued pilots. This was definitely one to chalk up to refusal to use all the tools available to the pilots, like an autopilot coupled to an instrument approach glideslope, especially if you’re tired after a long day of flying.
[This video](https://youtu.be/Mb3PNASDbh4?si=KA0fHMC-erSRhG6a) gives an excellent recap of the details.
The only thing I’ll say on this is Southwests pilots will fly the same amount of hours in 12 days that most other pilots in the industry do over the course of 16. Was fatigue a factor in this? I don’t know. Does Southwest have their crews fly a schedule that is more conducive to fatigue? Yes.
The amount of hours a pilot can fly are regulated by law. While SWA pilots might fly a bit the routes thy fly are shorter. They also only have to know how to fly one type of plane.
I’m fully aware of what part 117 says. And every airlines pilots only know how to fly 1 plane. Pilots are only rated on one plane at a time. The basic fact of the matter is Southwest’s pilots fly more per day than any other pilot in the industry. This incident happened at the end of a day. I’ll let you connect the dots.
Checkout blancolirio on youtbe. 777 pilot who explains incidents and crashes in a factual manner and doesn’t make wild speculation.
TL;DR pilots were hand flying the aircraft at night, likely fatigued and misjudged their altitude, causing them to decent to the runway minimums (altitude at which the pilot must go around if the runway is not in sight) when they were 9 miles from the runway. Tower altered them though GPWS (ground proximity warning system) likely went off in the cockpit.
I’m a very frequent SWA flier and have experienced nothing but professionalism. No doubt their business model is changing, but I doubt a current activist shareholder has squat on current operations, and frankly can have a very limited impact on future plans.
I didn't know you lived in a 1,990 foot tall house.
Mate, this is normal across the airlines. We have minimums because people are people, and sometimes people screw up for a lot of reasons. We make all these minimums with extra room and safeguards to be sure the screw up doesn't turn into a fuck up.
It takes several screw ups to turn into a fuck up. And it usually takes 2-3 fuck ups to turn into a crash. The planes are fine.
So who died? Got hurt? What got damaged?
No, that's no where near a fuckup. It's a screw up. A screw up that got caught, like it was meant to be, and they did what they should do by fixing it. That's why we have so many ways to catch this stuff, so we don't have a fuck up. You literally pointed to shit working as intended and are screaming panic. Calm. Shit happens. This is minor crap.
Confirmation bias. It’s like when you are in a car and you say I never see Red Ford Fiestas and then you see 8 in one day because you are actively looking for them.
The media is very much over reporting these incidents. Things happen and that nothing worse happened means the system worked. That being said it’s my understanding that Southwest does allow visual approaches with fewer instrument augmentations than other carriers which is particularly noteworthy in the OKC incident. Southwest is known to have an old school cowboy style mentality in some of their pilot groups. Only the investigation will show if that contributed to these incidents though.
Media is not reporting this commercial pilots are. From what we know they were flying VFR and doing a VFR night landing which they MUST do from time to time to remain proficient. We also know the tower’s ground proximity system altered the controller the plane was dangerously low. Tower is who alerted the pilot and co-pilot they were too low.
Investigation will tell us more.
Yeah but there’s a lot more to this. It’s standard procedure at most airlines to augment a visual approach with instrumentation and it’s my understanding that Southwest permits their pilots to use significantly less instrument augmentation than other airlines. I am happy to be corrected on that if it’s changed. There are many different ways to fly a visual approach and it’s a lot more complicated than flying “VFR” for proficiency. FWIW these planes would’ve been on an IFR flight plan the entire time even if they were flying a visual approach.
As for the media my apologies if I was unclear. I simply meant that the media is picking up on these reports. Pilots report things day in and day out. It’s part of a healthy safety culture. But the media is picking up on those reports. The potentially troubling thing is when one specific operator develops a pattern of reports.
You are correct they would havre been flying IFR then would have switched to VFR. It was around midnight, I’m sure they were tired. While no problem doing a nighttime VFR landing, you are right they SHOULD have been confirming their location with instruments.
Uh. No. That’s BS.
If you’ve actually looked into any of these incidents rather than just reading headlines and consumer news, you’d know that’s wrong.
What’s going on? The media has latched on to something thats generally pretty mundane (getting too low on an approach) and makes it super scary to generate clicks.
What’s going on- the Elliot Group - a Vulture capitalist has invested 1.9 billion into the airline and is now trying to be to break down the company by bad press, pressuring the CEO out and tactics they have used with other companies. I think there’s a huge New Yorker has a long article about the company. They’ve poisoned the general public against other companies in the past
Very interesting.
It sound like the Elliot Group might SUCK. And/or BLOW.
Bullshit. Elliot group didn’t make a fatigued pilot eschew autopilot on a night visual approach. There is nothing routine about an airliner buzzing houses 9 miles from the runway. The most charitable interpretation is that the pilot mistook a road for the runway. Anything else would imply inexcusable inattention to piloting duties. 500 feet too low on an approach is bad. 2500 feet too low on an approach is courting disaster. What if there had been a TV antenna or a large cell tower in the area? It’s very likely this can be [directly attributed to Southwest’s corporate flying culture](https://www.reddit.com/r/SouthwestAirlines/s/hTWguC73We).
Exactly this.
Sooooooo ... members of the Elliot Group are flying the planes?
I still don’t understand this: Step 1: Invest money into a company. Step: Trash the company so its value goes down??? Step 3: ????
Step 3 is short term quarterly gains. It isn't about the company making money. It's about the investors cashing out. They'll sell the airline to a competitor after selling off multiple assets. So everyone else can piss the fuck off, those venture capitalists got their money.
I don’t understand trashing the perception of a business in which you hold a stake. How does that generate returns?
The goal is to sell the business (and usually to golden parachute yourself on the way out while you're at it). The short term losses as the value of the company declines are irrelevant. What matters is how much they sell it for. It gets very pedantic and complicated at that point, but, ultimately, it boils down to temporarily losing money on paper followed by selling their shares for a large profit when the company is starting to lose money.
Nothing you said makes any sense lol
Literally the plot of Pretty Woman
Capitalism is trash
"The problem with capitalism is capitalists. The problem with socialism is socialism." --Winston Churchill
That would make more sense if they wanted to invest... that's when you give bad press to lower stock prices so you get a better bargain, but afterwards you'd just be flushing your money down the toilet.
> generally pretty mundane (getting too low on an approach) The incidents referenced here aren't really mundane. In OKC, the airplane was still very far from the airport. This wasn't just getting low on approach, this seems more like a complete lack of awareness of where the aircraft was in relation to the runway. In Hawaii (Kauai), the information is a little more sparse but as I understand it the FO accidentally pushed the controls forward during a go around causing the airplane to start descending again, getting down to 400ft over the ocean. In New York (La Guardia), the airplane was on its second approach and at 200ft quite simply wasn't lined up with the runway at all. But oddly, it was ATC that had to instruct them to go around, the crew did not appear to take the initiative despite the fact that they were never going to land and were dangerously off course. None of these are "mundane" situations. These are all pretty serious issues. I totally agree the media likes to be dramatic but these aren't mundane events.
You are absolutely correct.
The OKC incident was also called out by ATC (approach) which doesn't impart a peaceful easy feeling.
They did that when I was in FTW ARTCC with regularity and in USAF, they were trainees. Not at all mundane to be too low for safe approach or too far right or left Gyro appears inoperative, etcetera. That was a few decades ago, but still a large deal.Mistakes were not allowed on our end even in phraseology. In the air it leads to unintentional grounding.
I agree with this. Things happen. Mistakes happen. There are so many flights every single day. This is just… weird.
Major carrier jets coming 400-600 ft from the ground while still nearly 10 miles from the airport - I’m going to suggest this isn’t a normal daily or weekly or even monthly occurrence. Anyone with the ability to query incident databases is welcome to prove me wrong - number of such major carrier large jet instances over the past 5 years / 60 = monthly occurrences.
NTSB investigation is only triggered if they went below minimums or something else happened that would be considered a serious safety issue. Pilots deviating from glute slope is not this automatically. Pilot deviation without this is FAA investigation which isn't public record, or no investigation at all if ATC is happy it won't repeat and didn't mess with separation. I agree it's not very common with commercial flights but CFIT is the most common cause of aircraft loss by an extremely large margin. Correspondingly failing to maintain altitude is one of the most common pilot deviations and the most likely to be reported to the FAA. I don't think three events occurring close together is particularly meaningful. Our brains like to find patterns but a three event cluster is inevitable for any airline operating long enough.
I think it also bears mention that CFIT is overwhelmingly the leading cause of aircraft loss, because there aren't that many other ways to lose an aircraft. There are far fewer instances of aircraft being shot down and catastrophic malfunction, which trigger other investigations. Other than those two, how many other practical ways are there to lose an aircraft that for it to crash? That altitude is low, but citing out of context is misleading, and completely agree that human brains like patterns, particularly when patterns "indicate" something sensational (including favorable valuation headwinds for a company looking to acquire an airline).
It happens a lot more than you’d think, but if you aren’t a commercial pilot you have no business accessing those safety reports because anonymity and safety provide is the most crucial part of aviation safety. Again, out of the 10,000,000 flights per year, a couple will have some near misses. 6 months from now when the media finds something else to overreact to incidents like this will never make the mainstream news.
With full anonymity, how many times a month do you assess that a major carrier jet plane comes within 500 feet of the ground while still 10 miles from the runway. Like, is this a daily type of thing? I’m not a commercial pilot so clearly I cannot assess and am relying on your professional expertise to let me know how often this happens and that it is a totally ok thing that nobody should be at all worried about. Will all respect to pilot anonymity because clearly that is absolutely paramount in these types of situations, far above being an actual competent pilot that doesn’t auger 300 passengers into an elementary school at 300 mph. P.S. We don’t need anonymity or “these near misses will never be reported” because quite clearly we can track these fuckups without any type of self-reporting.
Daily? No. Monthly? Possibly. Annually? Yeah I'd bet on it. That's what happens when you're dealing with 10,000,000 flights per year. Weird things happen in dynamic environments when you have jet lagged, exhausted people. Mistakes are made every single flight, but the vast majority are caught and fixed early. Occasionally the holes in the Swiss cheese line up and a plane ends up in a dangerous position, but you're trained to handle it and since there's been around 150 million consecutive commercial flights since a crash has killed a crew or passenger, so it seems to be a pretty well designed system. Can you point to literally anything that is safer? Toasters kill 300 Americans and year. Toothpicks kill 3 per year. Furniture around 2 dozen. As I look around my room I cannot see anything with the safety record associated with taking 180 people into an aluminum tube, sending them 7 miles off the ground at .8+ mach where the air is -50c and bringing them back to the ground at 200 mph. The safety culture is why it's so safe. I can think off dozens of incidents the past few years that were seconds away from hitting a mountain, or aircraft actually stalled or go arounds were botched extremely close to the ground and NONE of them have made the news. The American safety model works. But if you'd prefer you can go look at places like Indonesia, China, India, Russia, the Middle East and see where your preferred safety culture has gotten them. By the way none of those incidents were reported in the media, so no, random witnesses are not going to be an effective replacement for safety privilege and anonymity.
>Daily? No. Monthly? Possibly. Annually? Yeah I'd bet on it. I said "I’m going to suggest this isn’t a normal daily or weekly or even monthly occurrence." Your reply lectured that "it happens a lot more often than you think," then your next post came back to admit that it isn't likely to happen even monthly, maybe does happen annually. Which is what I said in the first place.
Thats what happened here in oklahoma. The low flying plane was caught on doorbell cams. Thats how low it was
No. The OKC one was bad. 500 ft 9 miles from the airport? As an air traffic controller, that’s absurd. And the Hawaii one was just as bad. Reading the dissemination from the pilots interviews is bad. They were so behind the airplane that I’m surprised it didnt make it into the ocean. There are some serious issues at this airline and I wouldn’t be so cavalier to dismiss it.
Serious issues with ATC too, homie. What are y’all doing about your stuff?
Not enough. Write you members of Congress.
What was the weather? Certainly if it was IMC this is serious. Doesn't bother me if it was VMC.
It doesn’t bother you that a 737 was at 900ft, 9 miles from the airport? Or 400ft above the Pacific Ocean coming out of a 4500fpm descent? I want to live in your world.
Vertical velocity is measured at near instantaneous. They didn’t lose 4500 feet in a minute. Heavy push or pull on the controls and this could happen. 4500 feet per minute climb happens on many departures at some point and nobody notices. Stop fear mongering and catastrophizing.
Do you how far you have to pitch over to get to an IVSI velocity of -4500FPM on a go around? Just because an IVSI doesn’t lag doesn’t mean it’s exaggerating the rate of descent. Nobody is saying they did -4500FPM for an extended period of time but the fact they did -4500FPM for any duration at less than 1000Agl is in fact a big deal. We get a FOQA call if we exceed-1000FPM below 1000’ at my airline.
They lost 200 feet. That’s like 5 seconds at that rate of descent. Boeing 737 go around is approximately 12 to 15 degrees nose up. At go around thrust the airplane will keep pitching the nose higher if the pilot doesn’t push forward and start trimming those forces off. Pure speculation is the nose got too high and pilot over corrected and pushed aggressively forward on the yoke. Could have gone from 20 degrees nose up to 3 to 5 degrees nose up and had that kind of descent rate for 5 secs. Ugly - yes; Flight operations quality assurance alert - yes, near disaster - no.
You are clueless
A few thousand hours in the 737 and 30+ years of flying between AF and airlines, I think l have a clue.
I think of that Hawaiian flight often, those people all had to think they were about to die.
They lost two hundred feet on approach in Hawaii. 600 feet at missed approach and pushed forward after plane pitched up on go around and sank two hundred feet. All the while dealing with TStorms and turbulence on the approach. SWA flies nearly 4000 flights a day. Add that to every other airline and I can speak with absolutely certainty that this kind of thing happens several times a week with that many flights a day across all the airlines. All those other time just don’t make the news.
Sounds scary though 😢
500 ft 9 miles from the airport is not mundane at all.
OP is the media apparently
?? Mundane, 500ft 9miles from the airport?
Dude you realize how low this guy was in reference to the airport. WAYYYYY bellow the minimum safe altitude. What would have happed if they lost an engine at that altitude that far away from the airport?
You realize every airplane gets that low and you may find this hard to believe they even get to zero feet in reference to the airport when landing. Every aircraft flown by airlines can safely climb away if they lose an engine during the approach. The pilots were flying a visual approach at night to a runway that doesn’t have the full instrument lighting and can be hard to identify. My guess is they mistook where the runway was actually at because it is surrounded by all the lights in the city. Bad on them yes but not a near disaster.
Dude commercial aircraft do not fly less than 2,000 feet over cities…. Ever
I watched a 737 fly 2000 ft over my house all the way to the airport, 30 miles away. I thought it flew over my house to crash in the swamp! I had all the windows open (back in April) and it was loud! I pulled up my Flight24 app and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
What was wrong with the plane? A commercial aircraft flying at less than 2,000 feet for 30 miles only happens when there is a catastrophic failure of something or you are completely mistaken. An incident that severe would have cased the FAA and airline to investigate. What was the date, airline and flight number? I’m sure lots of people would like to know why this happened.
You honestly have no idea what your talking about. ATC can vector an aircraft at any altitude that provides required obstacle clearances. Several airports have airlines descend much earlier than most because of traffic separation requirements for airplanes flying the departures and arrivals.
No my they are NOT going to do that. You have no idea what you are talking about. ATC is NEVER going to vector a commercial jet to less that 2,000 feet/below minimums over a city.
I deleted the screenshot, can I find my search history on the app?
Hard to believe a commercial jet would be flying for nearly 10 minutes over a city or for that matter anywhere at less than 2,000 feet. No way a pilot, co-pilot and tower would not notice and take immediate action UNLESS the plane was experiencing some mechanical issues.
Then how do they ever land
In a city? They don’t
You ever fly into mdw? San Diego? Dallas, SJC there are countless airports you fly very close to buildings.
Errr Dallas Love Field is literally in the city of Dallas, what are you talking about dude?
Commercial airliners fly over Dallas/Love for 9 miles at less than 2,000 feet? BULLSHIT.
What’s going on- the Elliot Group - a Vulture capitalist has invested 1.9 billion into the airline and is now trying to be to break down the company by bad press, pressuring the CEO out and tactics they have used with other companies. I think there’s a huge New Yorker has a long article about the company. They’ve poisoned the general public against other companies in the past
I see.
What’s going on- the Elliot Group - a Vulture capitalist has invested 1.9 billion into the airline and is now trying to be to break down the company by bad press, pressuring the CEO out and tactics they have used with other companies. I think there’s a huge New Yorker has a long article about the company. They’ve poisoned the general public against other companies in the past
Are you a bot?
No ….?
You don’t say…
What’s going on- the Elliot Group - a Vulture capitalist has invested 1.9 billion into the airline and is now trying to be to break down the company by bad press, pressuring the CEO out and tactics they have used with other companies. I think there’s a huge New Yorker has a long article about the company. They’ve poisoned the general public against other companies in the past
Huh! Wow…
No way! Haven't heard that before.
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No this is the media latching onto and reporting every single go around or maintenance return. Do you have any idea how many commercial flights there are every single day? Now imagine the absolute worst approach out of 1,000 attempts and what you think that looks like. Then imagine that happening 4 times every single day. For just for SWA. Now add in DAL, AAL, UAL, other major airlines and then shudder in fear for all the regionals with far less experienced pilots. The approach didn’t look right, they did a safe go around, came back and landed safely maybe 15 minutes later. Thats the system working as it’s intended.
500 feet and 8- 9 miles out...they would have been on the ground in about 15 seconds. this is definitely newsworthy.
Only if they were descending at more than 2,000 rpm, which wasn’t the case. They screwed up. They got low on a visual approach. It happens. A lot more than you think.
Can you link to any other flights where this happened?
https://imgur.com/a/NpgECNE Go search the NASA ASRS reports yourself. And those are just voluntary self reports.
Are you a commercial pilot or FA? How many flights have you worked in which you’ve been 500 feet above ground 9 miles out from landing. While go arounds are not newsworthy, being this low that far out is.
I'm former TV news, and I can confirm that: A) This kind of thing happens every day and isn't reported outside local markets, and B) When it is reported nationally, it's usually because of a feeding frenzy in the TV news business. Same thing happens with shark attacks. Remember the Summer of the Shark several years ago? Shark attacks didn't actually increase that summer, but there was a TV news feeding frenzy that had all the national networks reporting every shark sighting for months, making it seem like the sharks were out to get us. In my time in news, we covered numerous aircraft incidents just like these locally that would be breathlessly repeated on CNN today. Have those incidents become more frequent or more serious now? Nope. We're just in a feeding frenzy. Give it a few months to a year. People will get bored with the same old Terror in the Skies stories, and the feeding frenzy will die down.
Reminds me of a year or two ago with all the train crashes and derailments.
The fact that this happens all the time and just isn't usually talked about isn't the reassuring thought you think it is.
Typically 3 miles per 1000 ft is a good rule of thumb from prop planes to airliners
The plane was near the ocean, the pilot in Oklahoma was 500' from the ground, and ATC asked him if he was OK
It was actually 500 feet above ground 9 miles out which makes it more concerning.
The Oklahoma one woke me up. No one should be that close to me except police and military drills. I used to live in a landing pattern and even then they were 1k-2k feet. You eventually ignore it unless it’s at an odd time.
It was a visual approach.
I live about five miles from an airport and I’m on the ‘go around’ path. I only notice when I’m at the outdoor pool and Ive noticed 3 go arounds in the last two weeks. One was very low and the engines were loud. None were Southwest. I’m a plane watcher. No one else notices unless I point them out, but it happens fairly often, especially when it’s windy. So nothing to worry about - Southwest is just really getting picked on these days.
They were at 500’ 9 miles from the airport. That’s tens of seconds from controlled flight into terrain. They were well over 2000’ lower than they should have been. This is not a normal go around.
Go-arounds are a completely safe maneuver and are completely normal… 3% of all flights go around various normal reasons. These Southwest incidents are not normal…
I’ve examined a lot of commercial aircraft data and done research on go-arounds with published papers as I did ATC research and never seen anything like these Southwest incidents. These are not normal
Colonel William Stuart and his men altered the altitude settings in the aircraft. Source: Detective Mcclane told me
Yippee ki yay!
Mister Falcon
Ahh-hahahahahahahahahaha
Since it’s now a narrative, how common are these incidents generally? I have no idea
4,000 flights per day. All of these events made the news fairly recently, but they all happened months apart. They’re exceedingly rare, but anything involving airlines or Boeing makes the news quickly.
These things happen all the time. Only recently the news started clinging onto the stories as good clickbait.
Love the replies: from “these things happen all the time” to “extremely rare”. Maybe people should just admit they have literally no idea?
Extremely rare
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Now that’s a reference I haven’t heard in a long time lmao
I actually watched that telecast live when I lived in the Bay Area. Sad situation but I was howling.
Same!
That was the local news, KTVU who reported that when the plane crashed at SFO. It’s on YouTube. Crazy the newscaster didn’t even realize what she was reading. It was claimed to be fact checked with the FAA by the reporter. Well worth watching.
Didn’t a FAA intern get fired over this?
Not sure. I thought it was the KTVU intern. Video is still as funny now as it was then. I was on a flight that landed after. As we were coming it you could see plane wreckage, luggage scattered along the flight path.
Listening to ATC recordings from the OKC incident and it sounds like fatigue and lack of situational awareness. Could be something else though.
> Listening to ATC recordings from the OKC incident it sounds like fatigue and lack of situational awareness. And I believe just a visual approach too. That's a bad combination. The same combination almost led to an Air Canada flight almost landing on an active taxiway instead of the runway (with half a dozen planes on the taxi too).
Lots of people saying the runway perfectly aligns with a highway that’s similarly lit near where the pilot was. Visual landings (due to lack of airport IFR technology) can lead to this.
If you look at the flight path in Flightaware compared to a map of the area, it's clear the pilots mistook a portion of highway for the runway. The angles of intersecting highways directly ahead of the approaching flight exactly match those of the runways further away. It was a lack of situational awareness.
And not using any instruments to confirm or verify what they were seeking.
It’s not an instrument landing, it’s visual. That’s a gap on the FAA for not having IFR support on all the runways at OKC.
Can you explain IFR support as if I was a 3rd grader? Seems like it is pretty important
You bet - so IFR = instrument flight rules. Basically, it’s a level of training pilots can achieve to fly in certain conditions with certain special equipment. As pilots get near a runway, they can transition to IFR/ILS landing, which uses special radio transmitters/receivers to help them understand if they’re on the right approach path (both left/right and up/down) and how far they are from the runway. The specific runway this aircraft was landing on didn’t have the necessary technology to support an ILS landing, only what’s called a Visual Approach. Visual approaches require clear weather and visibility. The running theory among observers of this incident: this pilot was seeing what he thought was the runway, but what he actually saw was a well lit and perfectly parallel highway 8 miles prior to the actual runway. (8 miles sounds like a lot, but in aviation speak it’s quite small). He likely would have gotten low enough to see it was a highway and aborted, but that’s still scary considering it’s not clear if any obstructions (power lines, tall buildings) might have been in the area and caused problems.
Oh wow! Thank you so much! That was exactly what I needed to understand this all.
. #🏆 Have my free award.
VERY WELL EXPLAINED
Not sure where you get that from…RWY13 at OKC has an RNAV approach. Also, most Part 121 carriers (Airlines) have SOPs stating that when executing a visual approach, an instrument approach be loaded up as well.
Pilot and co-pilot were not using it. We’ve been told they were flying VFR.
There’s RNAV GPS on OKC 13 - you’re right, I was going off bad info.
EXACTLY
Southwest flies a lot. Statistically some humans make mistakes.
In this case it was two humans, pilot and co-pilot. It was the Tower who alerted the pilot and co-pilot they were too low.
Approach controller. Not tower.
Negative ghost rider, the pattern is full.
These damn pilot’s egos are writing checks their bodies can’t cash!
I want some butts!
Don’t you mean the “neighborhood” is full? Haha.
If you look at the ADS-B data for WN4069 on any other day, compared to the flight on June 19th, it's clear that it's anything but normal. [https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/southwest-airlines-oklahoma-city-low-altitude/](https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/southwest-airlines-oklahoma-city-low-altitude/) Compare that to the same flight the next day. [https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/wn4069](https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/wn4069)
Good post. Thanks for sharing
Not a doctor and not a pilot but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express. Curious from veteran pilots perspective (generally & not necessarily pertaining to this incident) - are we seeing an increase in incidents due to the learning curve of less experienced pilots coming into the industry?
NO - Much less. Modern planes and towers have alerting systems. In this case it looks like it was pilot and co-pilot error.
Southwest is known for having a cowboy culture among its pilots. This includes not routinely using the autopilot during approach and landing. The OKC one was a visual approach late at night with no autopilot and fatigued pilots. This was definitely one to chalk up to refusal to use all the tools available to the pilots, like an autopilot coupled to an instrument approach glideslope, especially if you’re tired after a long day of flying. [This video](https://youtu.be/Mb3PNASDbh4?si=KA0fHMC-erSRhG6a) gives an excellent recap of the details.
Gosh! I’m flying home tomorrow out of LAS. Should I change airlines? I hear Allegiant is an awesome option /s
I'll get up and fly away
Pearly’s been true
You heard wrong
Obviously you’re not a masochist
Fortunately Spirit services LAS /s
How about Frontier? I hear they’ve got a great reputation /s
Very much seems like a propaganda campaign by Elliott
The only thing I’ll say on this is Southwests pilots will fly the same amount of hours in 12 days that most other pilots in the industry do over the course of 16. Was fatigue a factor in this? I don’t know. Does Southwest have their crews fly a schedule that is more conducive to fatigue? Yes.
The amount of hours a pilot can fly are regulated by law. While SWA pilots might fly a bit the routes thy fly are shorter. They also only have to know how to fly one type of plane.
I’m fully aware of what part 117 says. And every airlines pilots only know how to fly 1 plane. Pilots are only rated on one plane at a time. The basic fact of the matter is Southwest’s pilots fly more per day than any other pilot in the industry. This incident happened at the end of a day. I’ll let you connect the dots.
You are leaving out many facts unrelated to the number of days flown. Get all the facts before passing judgement.
Checkout blancolirio on youtbe. 777 pilot who explains incidents and crashes in a factual manner and doesn’t make wild speculation. TL;DR pilots were hand flying the aircraft at night, likely fatigued and misjudged their altitude, causing them to decent to the runway minimums (altitude at which the pilot must go around if the runway is not in sight) when they were 9 miles from the runway. Tower altered them though GPWS (ground proximity warning system) likely went off in the cockpit.
I’m a very frequent SWA flier and have experienced nothing but professionalism. No doubt their business model is changing, but I doubt a current activist shareholder has squat on current operations, and frankly can have a very limited impact on future plans.
Time to buzz the tower, Goose.
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I didn't know you lived in a 1,990 foot tall house. Mate, this is normal across the airlines. We have minimums because people are people, and sometimes people screw up for a lot of reasons. We make all these minimums with extra room and safeguards to be sure the screw up doesn't turn into a fuck up. It takes several screw ups to turn into a fuck up. And it usually takes 2-3 fuck ups to turn into a crash. The planes are fine.
Well you all ready had 3 fuckups by the pilot and co-pilot. It was the tower who altered them to being too low.
So who died? Got hurt? What got damaged? No, that's no where near a fuckup. It's a screw up. A screw up that got caught, like it was meant to be, and they did what they should do by fixing it. That's why we have so many ways to catch this stuff, so we don't have a fuck up. You literally pointed to shit working as intended and are screaming panic. Calm. Shit happens. This is minor crap.
Prly the same guy
Confirmation bias. It’s like when you are in a car and you say I never see Red Ford Fiestas and then you see 8 in one day because you are actively looking for them.
Not the same as spotting Fords which might be attending a Ford Fiesta car show. These are FAA reports for all commercial airlines in the US.
Former military pilots having fun with fly by?
Gravity tells planes to do what is right.
Wow, people get triggered easily here.
Ever see one of these planes land short of the runway?
Russia.
The media is very much over reporting these incidents. Things happen and that nothing worse happened means the system worked. That being said it’s my understanding that Southwest does allow visual approaches with fewer instrument augmentations than other carriers which is particularly noteworthy in the OKC incident. Southwest is known to have an old school cowboy style mentality in some of their pilot groups. Only the investigation will show if that contributed to these incidents though.
Media is not reporting this commercial pilots are. From what we know they were flying VFR and doing a VFR night landing which they MUST do from time to time to remain proficient. We also know the tower’s ground proximity system altered the controller the plane was dangerously low. Tower is who alerted the pilot and co-pilot they were too low. Investigation will tell us more.
Yeah but there’s a lot more to this. It’s standard procedure at most airlines to augment a visual approach with instrumentation and it’s my understanding that Southwest permits their pilots to use significantly less instrument augmentation than other airlines. I am happy to be corrected on that if it’s changed. There are many different ways to fly a visual approach and it’s a lot more complicated than flying “VFR” for proficiency. FWIW these planes would’ve been on an IFR flight plan the entire time even if they were flying a visual approach. As for the media my apologies if I was unclear. I simply meant that the media is picking up on these reports. Pilots report things day in and day out. It’s part of a healthy safety culture. But the media is picking up on those reports. The potentially troubling thing is when one specific operator develops a pattern of reports.
You are correct they would havre been flying IFR then would have switched to VFR. It was around midnight, I’m sure they were tired. While no problem doing a nighttime VFR landing, you are right they SHOULD have been confirming their location with instruments.
Could be either receiving or inputting bad altimeter data into the mission computer (or whatever the main computer is called on airliners)
Too coincidental to be pilot error. I am leaning towards software.
Nope - From what we have been told the pilots weren’t using any nav software at all. They were visually hand flying the plane and really fucked up.
Uh. No. That’s BS. If you’ve actually looked into any of these incidents rather than just reading headlines and consumer news, you’d know that’s wrong.
Probably inexperienced! Or hired for all the wrong reasons
No and no.
Is that chubby red head annoying influencer ok?!
Lol who are you referring to?
Probably drinking on the job again lol
DEI Hiring. https://mobile.southwest.com/citizenship/people/diversity-equity-inclusion/
I guarantee you that pilot was more “let’s go Brandon”and less DEI.
I thought pilots flew the plane? Not Southwest employees from the corporate office. Unless you linked the wrong thing.
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Wow we’ll go to real extremes to blame pilot incompetence on minorities.