9 ms·

Southwest flight came within 400 feet of crashing into the ocean

100 points by BostonFern 2y ago

adastra22 2y ago
On approach. I think that’s an important detail missing from the headline. Still a shocking near-miss, but it’s not like it dropped from 35,000 feet to 400 feet before correcting.
- nscalf 2y ago
  On approach, and dropped from 600 feet to 400 feet at a rate of 4000 feet per minute. So a 3 second drop. I don’t know much about what is normal here, but that seems like important framing.
  - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
    60-180 fpm (foot per minute) is a typical vertical speed at touchdown for an airliner. I think the glide slope is 600fpm (?). Eg. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/47430 https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/47430
  - MadnessASAP 2y ago
    1000-2000 fpm would be a typical climb/descent in most situations. 4000 fpm would raise an eyebrow or two but is not generally alarming (that is, it's well within the performance envelope of most aircraft). However, at 600' any loss of altitude without a suitable runway beneath you and an aircraft ready to greet it is a very alarming prospect. As for this incident, it sounds like a junior pilot accidentally hit the control column while going for another control. It's only notable for having occurred at the very moment you don't want such things to occur. I suggest a corrective action of briefing pilots not too hit the control column.
- sofixa 2y ago
  To be fair, most aircraft accidents are on or just after takeoff, or just before, during or after landing. Those are the most critical minutes when the most things can go wrong.
mrb 2y ago
Just making sense of the numbers to give a perspective: While at 600 feet, the “newer” first officer inadvertently pushed forward on the control column for about 3 seconds. In the span of 3 seconds the plane dropped from 600 to 400 feet. Then the situation was corrected and the airplane climbed. So if the first officer had kept the same rate of descent for 6 more seconds, it would have crashed. The article quotes the rate of descent as 4000 feet/minutes. Some more details here: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/southwest-plane-plunged-within-400-feet-of-ocean-near-hawaii-1.2085519 https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/southwest-plane-plunged-within-4... Edit: for the curious here is the flight data: https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA2786/history/20240412/0427Z/PHNL/PHNL https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA2786/history/2024... and the track log: https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA2786/history/20240412/0427Z/PHNL/PHNL/tracklog https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA2786/history/2024... you can see at around Thu 4/11 at 10:12:47 PM PDT the airplane made the rapid descent, then climbed back up quickly. However the ADS data shown by flightaware is too granular (one data point every 16-18 seconds) so we see the minimum altitude as 875 feet, but in reality the plane went lower. Apparently some other site (ADS-B Exchange) has more granular data, but I don't have access to it and am too lazy to create an account (is it free?)
- roomey 2y ago
  Well keep in mind with the stick forward the rate of descent would increase, and also the speed making pulling up much harder
  - Stratoscope 2y ago
    Actually, higher speed makes it easier to pull up. You have more lift and more control authority. As long as you don't exceed the aircraft's structural limits, airspeed is your friend. It's when you are low and slow and try to pull up with the elevator that you may stall the aircraft. You need to push the throttle to gain some airspeed.
    - Xerox9213 2y ago
      For some reason I pictured Mario 64 with the wing cap while thinking out your examples.
vundercind 2y ago
TL;DR from the article is a newbie pushed the column forward by accident and corrected very quickly. Dropped from 600 feet to 400 feet at a rate of 4,000 feet per minute. That’s about three seconds of too-fast descent at a constant 4,000ft/minute, though it wouldn’t have been constant so it may have been a bit longer that that, mostly at lower rates of descent. Not some huge plunge. Worth an investigation but the headline’s clickbaity.
- weaksauce 2y ago
  > TL;DR from the article is a newbie pushed the column forward that newbie has at least 1500 hours of flying in order to qualify as a first officer. not exactly new to flying. in europe(and used to be in the US before one accident that was not really related to their experience flying) it's something like 300 for FO but the captain is much more experienced.
  - sgjohnson 2y ago
    > it's something like 300 It’s actually 0 in Europe.
- jnwatson 2y ago
  It was a particularly bad time to make that mistake.
fotta 2y ago
per https://avherald.com/h?article=519ee0ab&opt=0 https://avherald.com/h?article=519ee0ab&opt=0 > What happened in these 16 seconds is described in an internal memo circulating in Southwest Airlines stating, that during the go around due to weather conditions the first officer, pilot flying, inadvertently pushed the control column forward while monitoring the power settings causing the aircraft to descend to about 400 feet MSL before the aircraft started climbing again.
cityofdelusion 2y ago
The first officer made a mistake and the captain quickly corrected, per other articles on this. A lot of the headlines around this have been very click-baity, trying to imply that it is a Boeing or Max problem when it is just old-fashioned pilot error.
- dv_dt 2y ago
  It's notable though that airlines have been probing trying to reduce flight crew sizes - if this incident occurred on a single pilot flight, the outcome could have been catastrophic. https://www.thedrive.com/news/airlines-are-pushing-to-legalize-one-pilot-cockpits https://www.thedrive.com/news/airlines-are-pushing-to-legali...
  - etse 2y ago
    I can imagine. An AI "copilot" could mean quick error correction... or maybe a snowballing of tiny errors into something catastrophic.
    - doodlebugging 2y ago
      Yes, this is an issue. It hasn't been that long ago that DARPA ran the challenges that led to the proof of concept for self-driving, autonomously navigating robot vehicles. Some of the technology became the selling point for various automobiles with some of the promises still lacking in deliverable results. You have to test all this to know whether it will work and eventually some of the tests need to shift from a workstation to the real world. Like the Air Force and their recent conversion of some fighters to unpiloted planes, this will all happen and one day it will be the norm. If we're all lucky all the test failures will happen on a server somewhere instead of out here in real life.
    - cpncrunch 2y ago
      The flight path for the missed approach is already in the flight management system, and the autopilot will fly it much more accurately than a human pilot. In this case it seems that either the missed approach was being flown by hand, or else the pilot's inadvertant push on the control column overrided the autopilot. Anyway, the point is that if "the computers" had been flying, this would never have happened in the first place. Perhaps we just need one pilot to take over in case there is some emergency that can't be handled by the autopilot.
t0mas88 2y ago
This is not an uncommon mistake for pilots in training to make. It sounds strange, but you have to keep in mind that this maneuver is done with no outside visibility (that's the reason for the go around). So the pilot is only looking at his instruments. The first officer had to do several things at the same time, and for a few seconds did not monitor the aircraft pitch attitude well enough. In a jet the difference between a normal (about 600 to 700 ft/min) descend or this rapid descend is only something like 5 degrees. So it's easy to get this wrong if you look away from the instruments for just a few seconds. Especially if you're changing configuration (flaps) and power at the same time, because both have an effect on pitch.
- Rygian 2y ago
  > this maneuver is done with no outside visibility (that's the reason for the go around). A go-around is the right call whenever the approach is not stabilized, even if visibility is perfect.
  - t0mas88 2y ago
    Absolutely, but in this case it was a go around from a non precision approach due to weather, according to Avherald.
gnabgib 2y ago
Discussion (34 points, 23 hours ago, 26 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40684560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40684560
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
This incident occurred in April not now, and was pilot error in pushing the controls too far forward. Looking at the various news articles about this incident, I find the reporting is a bit deceptive in some of the other articles that lead with emphasis on the make and model of the plane (Boeing 737 Max), even though it is not relevant to the incident which is purely pilot error.
kadomony 2y ago
What happens to the pilot in error in this case? Learn from mistake and keep flying? Grounded? Fired?
m463 2y ago
But was it boeing or airbus???
- mjcl 2y ago
  If you're serious, Southwest only uses Boeing 737s.
  - m463 2y ago
    I was slightly making fun of how the news media has been reporting any airline problem as boeing-related. This story was sort of refreshing as they didn't call out the make, model and history of the aircraft.
BurningFrog 2y ago
My last flight came within 40 feet of crashing into the tarmac.
- Terretta 2y ago
  Mine came within 0 feet, then everyone clapped. Happens every time.
jmward01 2y ago
Why do articles like this get written? This is a minor hiccup that was pretty far away from disaster. Maybe a better title would be 'a worse than normal approach happened resulting in nothing of consequence'. This is stoking unreasonable fear to the detriment of the industry, passengers and journalism as a whole.
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 2y ago
The approach chart shows an MDA (Minimum Descent Altitude) of 940'. You DO NOT DESCEND BELOW MDA unless the runway is in sight. Approach design standards provide some margins, but a 500-600' altitude bust blows past those margins. Luckily this was an over water approach. The GPWS alert seems to have caught this in time. Busting MDA on a missed approach is a fail on your Instrument Rating flight test. That said, a 737 is pitch sensitive. No mention is made of the flight mode.

100 points by BostonFern 2y ago

On approach. I think that’s an important detail missing from the headline. Still a shocking near-miss, but it’s not like it dropped from 35,000 feet to 400 feet before correcting.

nscalf 2y ago
On approach, and dropped from 600 feet to 400 feet at a rate of 4000 feet per minute. So a 3 second drop. I don’t know much about what is normal here, but that seems like important framing.
- pbhjpbhj 2y ago
  60-180 fpm (foot per minute) is a typical vertical speed at touchdown for an airliner. I think the glide slope is 600fpm (?). Eg. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/47430 https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/47430
- MadnessASAP 2y ago
  1000-2000 fpm would be a typical climb/descent in most situations. 4000 fpm would raise an eyebrow or two but is not generally alarming (that is, it's well within the performance envelope of most aircraft). However, at 600' any loss of altitude without a suitable runway beneath you and an aircraft ready to greet it is a very alarming prospect. As for this incident, it sounds like a junior pilot accidentally hit the control column while going for another control. It's only notable for having occurred at the very moment you don't want such things to occur. I suggest a corrective action of briefing pilots not too hit the control column.
sofixa 2y ago
To be fair, most aircraft accidents are on or just after takeoff, or just before, during or after landing. Those are the most critical minutes when the most things can go wrong.

mrb 2y ago

Just making sense of the numbers to give a perspective: While at 600 feet, the “newer” first officer inadvertently pushed forward on the control column for about 3 seconds. In the span of 3 seconds the plane dropped from 600 to 400 feet. Then the situation was corrected and the airplane climbed. So if the first officer had kept the same rate of descent for 6 more seconds, it would have crashed. The article quotes the rate of descent as 4000 feet/minutes. Some more details here: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/southwest-plane-plunged-within-400-feet-of-ocean-near-hawaii-1.2085519 https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/southwest-plane-plunged-within-4... Edit: for the curious here is the flight data: https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA2786/history/20240412/0427Z/PHNL/PHNL https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA2786/history/2024... and the track log: https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA2786/history/20240412/0427Z/PHNL/PHNL/tracklog https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA2786/history/2024... you can see at around Thu 4/11 at 10:12:47 PM PDT the airplane made the rapid descent, then climbed back up quickly. However the ADS data shown by flightaware is too granular (one data point every 16-18 seconds) so we see the minimum altitude as 875 feet, but in reality the plane went lower. Apparently some other site (ADS-B Exchange) has more granular data, but I don't have access to it and am too lazy to create an account (is it free?)

roomey 2y ago
Well keep in mind with the stick forward the rate of descent would increase, and also the speed making pulling up much harder
- Stratoscope 2y ago
  Actually, higher speed makes it easier to pull up. You have more lift and more control authority. As long as you don't exceed the aircraft's structural limits, airspeed is your friend. It's when you are low and slow and try to pull up with the elevator that you may stall the aircraft. You need to push the throttle to gain some airspeed.
  - Xerox9213 2y ago
    For some reason I pictured Mario 64 with the wing cap while thinking out your examples.

vundercind 2y ago

TL;DR from the article is a newbie pushed the column forward by accident and corrected very quickly. Dropped from 600 feet to 400 feet at a rate of 4,000 feet per minute. That’s about three seconds of too-fast descent at a constant 4,000ft/minute, though it wouldn’t have been constant so it may have been a bit longer that that, mostly at lower rates of descent. Not some huge plunge. Worth an investigation but the headline’s clickbaity.

weaksauce 2y ago
> TL;DR from the article is a newbie pushed the column forward that newbie has at least 1500 hours of flying in order to qualify as a first officer. not exactly new to flying. in europe(and used to be in the US before one accident that was not really related to their experience flying) it's something like 300 for FO but the captain is much more experienced.
- sgjohnson 2y ago
  > it's something like 300 It’s actually 0 in Europe.
jnwatson 2y ago
It was a particularly bad time to make that mistake.

fotta 2y ago

per https://avherald.com/h?article=519ee0ab&opt=0 https://avherald.com/h?article=519ee0ab&opt=0 > What happened in these 16 seconds is described in an internal memo circulating in Southwest Airlines stating, that during the go around due to weather conditions the first officer, pilot flying, inadvertently pushed the control column forward while monitoring the power settings causing the aircraft to descend to about 400 feet MSL before the aircraft started climbing again.

cityofdelusion 2y ago

The first officer made a mistake and the captain quickly corrected, per other articles on this. A lot of the headlines around this have been very click-baity, trying to imply that it is a Boeing or Max problem when it is just old-fashioned pilot error.

dv_dt 2y ago
It's notable though that airlines have been probing trying to reduce flight crew sizes - if this incident occurred on a single pilot flight, the outcome could have been catastrophic. https://www.thedrive.com/news/airlines-are-pushing-to-legalize-one-pilot-cockpits https://www.thedrive.com/news/airlines-are-pushing-to-legali...
- etse 2y ago
  I can imagine. An AI "copilot" could mean quick error correction... or maybe a snowballing of tiny errors into something catastrophic.
  - doodlebugging 2y ago
    Yes, this is an issue. It hasn't been that long ago that DARPA ran the challenges that led to the proof of concept for self-driving, autonomously navigating robot vehicles. Some of the technology became the selling point for various automobiles with some of the promises still lacking in deliverable results. You have to test all this to know whether it will work and eventually some of the tests need to shift from a workstation to the real world. Like the Air Force and their recent conversion of some fighters to unpiloted planes, this will all happen and one day it will be the norm. If we're all lucky all the test failures will happen on a server somewhere instead of out here in real life.
  - cpncrunch 2y ago
    The flight path for the missed approach is already in the flight management system, and the autopilot will fly it much more accurately than a human pilot. In this case it seems that either the missed approach was being flown by hand, or else the pilot's inadvertant push on the control column overrided the autopilot. Anyway, the point is that if "the computers" had been flying, this would never have happened in the first place. Perhaps we just need one pilot to take over in case there is some emergency that can't be handled by the autopilot.

t0mas88 2y ago

This is not an uncommon mistake for pilots in training to make. It sounds strange, but you have to keep in mind that this maneuver is done with no outside visibility (that's the reason for the go around). So the pilot is only looking at his instruments. The first officer had to do several things at the same time, and for a few seconds did not monitor the aircraft pitch attitude well enough. In a jet the difference between a normal (about 600 to 700 ft/min) descend or this rapid descend is only something like 5 degrees. So it's easy to get this wrong if you look away from the instruments for just a few seconds. Especially if you're changing configuration (flaps) and power at the same time, because both have an effect on pitch.

Rygian 2y ago
> this maneuver is done with no outside visibility (that's the reason for the go around). A go-around is the right call whenever the approach is not stabilized, even if visibility is perfect.
- t0mas88 2y ago
  Absolutely, but in this case it was a go around from a non precision approach due to weather, according to Avherald.

gnabgib 2y ago

Discussion (34 points, 23 hours ago, 26 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40684560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40684560

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

This incident occurred in April not now, and was pilot error in pushing the controls too far forward. Looking at the various news articles about this incident, I find the reporting is a bit deceptive in some of the other articles that lead with emphasis on the make and model of the plane (Boeing 737 Max), even though it is not relevant to the incident which is purely pilot error.

kadomony 2y ago

What happens to the pilot in error in this case? Learn from mistake and keep flying? Grounded? Fired?

m463 2y ago

But was it boeing or airbus???

mjcl 2y ago
If you're serious, Southwest only uses Boeing 737s.
- m463 2y ago
  I was slightly making fun of how the news media has been reporting any airline problem as boeing-related. This story was sort of refreshing as they didn't call out the make, model and history of the aircraft.

BurningFrog 2y ago

My last flight came within 40 feet of crashing into the tarmac.

Terretta 2y ago
Mine came within 0 feet, then everyone clapped. Happens every time.

jmward01 2y ago

Why do articles like this get written? This is a minor hiccup that was pretty far away from disaster. Maybe a better title would be 'a worse than normal approach happened resulting in nothing of consequence'. This is stoking unreasonable fear to the detriment of the industry, passengers and journalism as a whole.

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 2y ago

The approach chart shows an MDA (Minimum Descent Altitude) of 940'. You DO NOT DESCEND BELOW MDA unless the runway is in sight. Approach design standards provide some margins, but a 500-600' altitude bust blows past those margins. Luckily this was an over water approach. The GPWS alert seems to have caught this in time. Busting MDA on a missed approach is a fail on your Instrument Rating flight test. That said, a 737 is pitch sensitive. No mention is made of the flight mode.