Southwest flight incident

srleslie said:
Does anyone know what happened here?


Boeing plane drops within 400ft of the ocean in horrifying fall from sky​

A Southwest Airlines flight is under investigation after an aircraft dropped within 400 feet of the ocean following an aborted landing attempt. The Boeing 737 MAX 8, which had been flying between cities from Honolulu to Lihue airport in Kauai, plunged at a maximum descent rate of about 4,400 feet per minute off the coast of Hawaii before climbing back up to safety.
Click to expand...

Ask me over a beer where we got “SRS Verified” from on the Airbus. Notice how I didn’t crack on SWA because, you know, ‘glass houses’ and rocks ‘n such. :)
 
MikeD said:
This is a failure to fly issue. Pilots get too dependent on the automation. It shouldn’t matter if the TOGA engages or not, whether you get the fly-up indication from it or not, or whether the autothrottles are engaged or not. The pilot flying should be manually doing all of this first, manually flying the plane, to ensure that the plane is going where it needs to, how it needs to, as the various items are being engaged to ensure they do engage correctly. Even if on a fully coupled missed. I’ve seen a few pilots who are trying to engage automation at the worst possible time, low to the ground, instead of set the the plane where it needs to go pitch, power abd/or heading-wise.
Click to expand...

I wish it was taught that way in the schoolhouse.
 
BEEF SUPREME said:
I wish it was taught that way in the schoolhouse.
Click to expand...
I just finished CQT and over the course of the week we easily did a dozen go arounds. That tells me that the data is saying the pilot group needs to work on go arounds.
Therefore, if you go around both pilots better be paying attention and ready to intervene if things start to look hairy.
 
The discussion about mashing the AP button reminds me a little of my favorite meme. (Just disregard the ab initio part)

IMG_1924.jpeg
 
ZapBrannigan said:
I just finished CQT and over the course of the week we easily did a dozen go arounds. That tells me that the data is saying the pilot group needs to work on go arounds.
Therefore, if you go around both pilots better be paying attention and ready to intervene if things start to look hairy.
Click to expand...

We wont have time for that at Eskimo Airways because there will be 4 obscure MELs, 3 failures that I've never seen on the line, an issue with a virtual passenger and a dual NDB approach at an airport we never use. Of course we will have to rush through 3 different demos of statistically impossible flight control failures before that.
 
BEEF SUPREME said:
We wont have time for that at Eskimo Airways because there will be 4 obscure MELs, 3 failures that I've never seen on the line, an issue with a virtual passenger and a dual NDB approach at an airport we never use. Of course we will have to rush through 3 different demos of statistically impossible flight control failures before that.
Click to expand...

This year is super easy, simple scenario both legs.
 
BEEF SUPREME said:
We wont have time for that at Eskimo Airways because there will be 4 obscure MELs, 3 failures that I've never seen on the line, an issue with a virtual passenger and a dual NDB approach at an airport we never use. Of course we will have to rush through 3 different demos of statistically impossible flight control failures before that.
Click to expand...
I find myself in the unenviable (and, frankly, uncomfortable) position of cheerleading for my bosses for the second time in a couple of days. Ick. But our CQs are pretty well-designed, AFAICT (for the most part). Like, realistic problems you will and probably have run into on the line, then some wildcard that plays in to those previous failures/weather-events/whatever. To be fair, I guess I'm more cheerleading the Training Department than the Bosses, but I still feel like I need to take a shower.
 
Boris Badenov said:
I find myself in the unenviable (and, frankly, uncomfortable) position of cheerleading for my bosses for the second time in a couple of days. Ick. But our CQs are pretty well-designed, AFAICT (for the most part). Like, realistic problems you will and probably have run into on the line, then some wildcard that plays in to those previous failures/weather-events/whatever. To be fair, I guess I'm more cheerleading the Training Department than the Bosses, but I still feel like I need to take a shower.
Click to expand...
BORIS!!
 
Last edited:
Boris Badenov said:
I find myself in the unenviable (and, frankly, uncomfortable) position of cheerleading for my bosses for the second time in a couple of days. Ick. But our CQs are pretty well-designed, AFAICT (for the most part). Like, realistic problems you will and probably have run into on the line, then some wildcard that plays in to those previous failures/weather-events/whatever. To be fair, I guess I'm more cheerleading the Training Department than the Bosses, but I still feel like I need to take a shower.
Click to expand...
You know. Since you live in SDF, you could be home every night if you got in to the training dept. Always seemed like a good gig to me if you lived there. You kinda have to kiss up and have a great attitude to get the job but it might be worth it.
 
DE727UPS said:
You know. Since you live in SDF, you could be home every night if you got in to the training dept. Always seemed like a good gig to me if you lived there. You kinda have to kiss up and have a great attitude to get the job but it might be worth it.
Click to expand...
It's a great gig...for someone else. I can barely remember the memory items. I deeply respect the training department people, perhaps even moreso because I am manifestly not one of them...
 
BEEF SUPREME said:
Maybe it's just me but I'm sticking up for the crew and FO on this one. Should they have not done this. Yes absolutely but this trip has all the pitfalls of a sleeper super difficult leg all the while appearing to be a nice chill flight through the islands from the outside looking in. It would be easy for a crew to be pulled into complacency for a simple 30 minute flight. When in my mind this flight has almost all the threats: weather, terrain, compressed time, automation, performance for landing and unfamiliar approach.

It's easy to just blame this on the FO for being a newb and the captain for being a SWA boomer but I think it shows some really big issues with the 737 and it appears to me that it reveals a training deficiency at my own airline. I've seen more than one mishandled go around in VFR weather. I think this is a training issue. Sometimes the pilots hit the autothrottle button instead of the TO/GA button. I flew 2 corporate jets where the TO/GA switch was where the autothrottle disconnect button is. I've mixed these two buttons up just due to primacy and being task saturated.

Also, we get super complex training on outlandish scenarios that never happen on the line but very little time on simple things we see on the line all the time. The biggest issue: a simple go around in VFR weather. Where the MCP is set at 2000 the aircraft is at 2500' and coupled to the ILS. Go around instructions are issued and it doesn't go well. We need back to basics CQ scenarios. Not heroic save the dying passenger with 15 MELS and failed MEDLINK communication CQs.

The 737 MCP is a black hole of automation that is several layers deep if not more. The entire reason I cover the VNAV isms of that airplane during my briefing with the FO is to avoid the catastrophic button mashing I see if I don't cover the illogical VNAV of the 737 prior to push. The only south landing IFR approach at LIH is LNAV/VNAV. I have a feeling the crew of that SWA aircraft were button mashing the MCP. It even says the FO attempted to turn on the autopilot, which is on the MCP and couldn't. The autopilot won't engage unless the aircraft is trimmed. So the aircraft isn't doing what he wanted, expected or briefed now he smashes the autopilot due to high workload. What does that get you? You have one of the most annoying sounds on earth, the 737 autopilot disconnect sound on top of all the other chaos in that cockpit.

The only way to stop this is to brief the approach ideally on the ground of the departure point before you take off for a less than 30 minute flight. Then start hand flying the aircraft around 10K. Make sure you are slower than you think you need to be because the 737 is super slippery and won't slow at all. Configure early. You should have already run landing numbers on the ground before departure. Since LIH is short and it's raining. Flaps 40 for sure. Ideally you should be configured, on speed and have completed the landing checklist by 1500'. When I am done with all that I'll say "OK if we go around it's: "TO/GA, positive rate, gear up, flaps 15. You won't see me add full TO/GA thrust I'm just going to add 85% or so. Please call out anything you don't like."

I do this often on the Juneau to Sitka flight. There is a lot of time built into that leg. So I program 210 knots as our max speed. Its the same altitude, 16K for cruise as well. It's really an almost identical flight. I get the performance numbers for landing on the ground in JNU. I brief the entire flight. I connect the entire flight plan so there is no need to touch the FMC ideally as long as we are cleared by ATC. That is briefed as a threat. These are the most challenging flights.

I think we do have a problem industry wide but we are missing the point. My shop is training us to handing complex issues that we never see on the line and barely checking the box on simple common errors that lead to the outcome we are discussing.
Click to expand...
Everything here is spot on. I’m not at SWA but I understand that initial qual isn’t AQP. Idk if recurrent/CQ is either but I’ve noticed that AQP is more practical compared to before when you came in and did a bunch of maneuvers that you wouldn’t do for another year.

There are things that make me scratch my head at my current shop but the training is top notch. The training department took the details from what was almost a pretty bad accident last year and integrated it into our CQ along with other issues and gray areas we may experience on the line. I left feeling like it was a lot more than just checking boxes and moving on to the next maneuver.

Boeings auto flight system seems archaic compared to Airbus but it’s intricate enough to lead button smashing just like you said. Learning when and under what conditions a button would do something took a bit of studying and experience for me. “Dumbing down” the automation when you didn’t understand what it was doing was the best piece of advice I got when I came to the 75/76.
 
"Check your FMA's" was the best advice I never followed. I got yelled at going into OGG on IOE as an F/O for clicking off the autopilot and flying the airplane. Check airman said I needed to be able to work the automation to get the job done.
 
DE727UPS said:
"Check your FMA's" was the best advice I never followed. I got yelled at going into OGG on IOE as an F/O for clicking off the autopilot and flying the airplane. Check airman said I needed to be able to work the automation to get the job done.
Click to expand...
It’s hard going from not paying much attention to the FMA’s to having automation usage centered around them. We had the same issue at 9E when the 200 started flying out of ATL. People were flying straight out in ATL vs. checking to see if LNAV actually captured a lateral path.
Side note, I’m living for the day ONT gets Hawaii flying back.
 
DE727UPS said:
"Check your FMA's" was the best advice I never followed. I got yelled at going into OGG on IOE as an F/O for clicking off the autopilot and flying the airplane. Check airman said I needed to be able to work the automation to get the job done.
Click to expand...
under that context yes...but almost every other "Check your FMA's" will save you (FCU = Rumor, FMA's = Fact)
 
Forget FMA’s, forget CDU’s, forget MCP…use your little hands to push the throttles up and set a known pitch attitude that will get the airplane away from the ground- no matter what.

We all inherently know this, but for some reason, mostly having to do with training department costs, we have forgotten the basics of aviation that keep you alive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top