5 ms·

Pilots said nothing as Southwest plane flew dangerously low over Tampa Bay

30 points by howard941 2y ago

playworker 2y ago
https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/southwest-low-approach-tampa/ https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/southwest-low-approach-ta...
NBJack 2y ago
I can only speculate, but I hope one of the things we get out of an analysis of the Crowdstrike incident is a thorough analysis of the consequences. Airports just a few days ago were packed with passengers, delayed planes, misplaced luggage, and general chaos in scheduling. I imagine flight crews were impacted just as much, if not more, even if their own airline wasn't directly involved.
- graton 2y ago
  This flight incident occurred on July 14th. The Crowdstrike incident happened five days later on July 19th. They are unrelated.
  - NBJack 2y ago
    Blast it, you are quite correct. Thank you.
exogeny 2y ago
As noted in the article, nothing about their explanation makes sense. Fort Lauderdale is over 260 miles from Tampa. How in the world is that closer than trying to turn around and land in Tampa? Between stories like this and the ones about runway incursions, it does sometimes feel like our system is beyond the breaking point and that we're on the precipice of a disaster. On the other hand, I can't remember the last time there actually was one and it's very possible that the fact that we only hear about when things go wrong is coloring my perception.
- Filligree 2y ago
  It’s the sort of behaviour, and explanation, that you might expect from someone who is far too tired to function, and is operating purely on ingrained habit. Things went well in this case, but I’ve seen the sort of schedules that are considered safe, and I can’t help but notice that if you asked me to work the same schedule then I would, at best, be exhausted at the end of every workday. If I for any reason didn’t get proper rest, if I had a subclinical cold, anything, then I’d be falling asleep at the wheel.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    I think both pilots and air traffic control are stretched thin due to labor shortages, and these incidents are the symptom (pilot and ATC errors, the latter appearing to be occurring far more often than previously wrt runway conflict and incursions). The system will continue to operate to the best of abilities, but failure will eventually result, because tired people make mistakes. An interesting exercise would be to consume ADS-B data flow and surface anomalous aircraft behavior (based on historical flight path look back and airspace/airspeed/altitude logic) for triage and reporting outside of formal reporting by ATC or pilots. https://www.reuters.com/article/business/southwest-airlines-ceo-sees-industry-wide-pilot-shortage-persisting-for-three-ye-idUSKBN2XN3RH/ https://www.reuters.com/article/business/southwest-airlines-... https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/business/faa-short-on-air-traffic-controllers/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/business/faa-short-on-air-tra... Edit: @CoastalCoder: I would also agree with that framing.
    - CoastalCoder 2y ago
      > I think both pilots and air traffic control are stretched thin due to labor shortages I find this framing interesting. Why call it "labor shortages" instead of "excess ticket sales" or "excess flight scheduling"? I'm not trying to pick on the parent comment; I've seen this framing a lot.
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        Or "insufficient compensation".
ryandrake 2y ago
ATC recording of the incident made it to VASAviation three days ago[1]. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDl5xYidtQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDl5xYidtQQ
JohnMakin 2y ago
I am not a commercial airline pilot but it is a topic of fascination for me for a long time - wouldn't this cause a terrain warning? How were the pilots unaware until ATC told them? Something very strange about this story - I guess fatigue makes sense, but that doesn't explain rerouting to fort lauderdale very well to me. I'll toss out a theory - there has been a pilot shortage for the last several years. Are corners getting cut on pilot training? Incompetence explains a lot. This is a really baffling incident to me on its face and reading some takes from aviation experts it seems like I am not the only one that thinks so.
- altgoogler 2y ago
  They didn't get a terrian warning because they were landing. Being close to the ground is what they expected. They have both radar & pressure altimeters. What might have happened is that due to the poor weather they thought they were closer to the airport, or they weren't closely following their glide path, or the aircraft was misconfigured for the RNAV approach. Perhaps a combination of the three.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    even 4 miles out from the runway? Thanks I did not know that.
    - p_l 2y ago
      If they are too low according to TAWS map, there would be warning even if they were landing. You can inhibit some of the alerts by switching TAWS into "Terrain Inhibit" mode, but that's usually done for landing at runways outside of TAWS database. That said, TAWS won't fire if you're below airspace-mandated altitude but above "minimally safe" altitude.
- bombcar 2y ago
  I'm not a commercial pilot but as a private pilot it looks like they were doing a manual approach .... and were lined up with the freeway bridge and attempting to land on it? The blog linked elsewhere looks like a perfect glide path for that ... which you shouldn't be doing. In which case, the terrain warnings would be the standard "you're landing, idiot" noises which wouldn't alert them to anything, because they'd be expecting them.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nickburns 2y ago
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. This is your, uh, captain (obvious) speaking. It, uh, couldn't be any clearer here, based on all the circumstances, that, uh—these pilots truly believed they had the runway in sight when it was, in fact, the Courtney Campbell Causeway.
ja27 2y ago
The flight path looks like they were approaching for the east-west runway which is pretty rarely used at Tampa so that might have caused some confusion but that's what instruments and ATC are for. If they had to divert, St. Pete Clearwater is right there and big. They probably flew right over it. Orlando and Sarasota are also much closer than Ft. Lauderdale. Maybe they didn't want St. Pete/Clearwater or Sarasota because of weather or Southwest doesn't use them, but Orlando gets plenty of Southwest traffic.
- ratg13 2y ago
  This is the sticking point for me and somewhat feels like they did this deliberately to erase the cockpit voice recorder so they could try and limit lawsuits and negative press. Most CVRs are overwritten in 2 hours unless it’s a brand new aircraft.
appplication 2y ago
There was another incident recently I recall where the pilots accidentally descended too fast and were seconds from crashing. I can’t recall specifics, but I’m surprised that wasn’t also mentioned in the article.
pljldos 2y ago
[dead]
p_l 2y ago
https://avherald.com/h?article=51b5f8ed&opt=1 https://avherald.com/h?article=51b5f8ed&opt=1 For a more detailed description of the event

30 points by howard941 2y ago

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/southwest-low-approach-tampa/ https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/southwest-low-approach-ta...

NBJack 2y ago

I can only speculate, but I hope one of the things we get out of an analysis of the Crowdstrike incident is a thorough analysis of the consequences. Airports just a few days ago were packed with passengers, delayed planes, misplaced luggage, and general chaos in scheduling. I imagine flight crews were impacted just as much, if not more, even if their own airline wasn't directly involved.

graton 2y ago
This flight incident occurred on July 14th. The Crowdstrike incident happened five days later on July 19th. They are unrelated.
- NBJack 2y ago
  Blast it, you are quite correct. Thank you.

exogeny 2y ago

As noted in the article, nothing about their explanation makes sense. Fort Lauderdale is over 260 miles from Tampa. How in the world is that closer than trying to turn around and land in Tampa? Between stories like this and the ones about runway incursions, it does sometimes feel like our system is beyond the breaking point and that we're on the precipice of a disaster. On the other hand, I can't remember the last time there actually was one and it's very possible that the fact that we only hear about when things go wrong is coloring my perception.

Filligree 2y ago
It’s the sort of behaviour, and explanation, that you might expect from someone who is far too tired to function, and is operating purely on ingrained habit. Things went well in this case, but I’ve seen the sort of schedules that are considered safe, and I can’t help but notice that if you asked me to work the same schedule then I would, at best, be exhausted at the end of every workday. If I for any reason didn’t get proper rest, if I had a subclinical cold, anything, then I’d be falling asleep at the wheel.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  I think both pilots and air traffic control are stretched thin due to labor shortages, and these incidents are the symptom (pilot and ATC errors, the latter appearing to be occurring far more often than previously wrt runway conflict and incursions). The system will continue to operate to the best of abilities, but failure will eventually result, because tired people make mistakes. An interesting exercise would be to consume ADS-B data flow and surface anomalous aircraft behavior (based on historical flight path look back and airspace/airspeed/altitude logic) for triage and reporting outside of formal reporting by ATC or pilots. https://www.reuters.com/article/business/southwest-airlines-ceo-sees-industry-wide-pilot-shortage-persisting-for-three-ye-idUSKBN2XN3RH/ https://www.reuters.com/article/business/southwest-airlines-... https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/business/faa-short-on-air-traffic-controllers/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/business/faa-short-on-air-tra... Edit: @CoastalCoder: I would also agree with that framing.
  - CoastalCoder 2y ago
    > I think both pilots and air traffic control are stretched thin due to labor shortages I find this framing interesting. Why call it "labor shortages" instead of "excess ticket sales" or "excess flight scheduling"? I'm not trying to pick on the parent comment; I've seen this framing a lot.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      Or "insufficient compensation".

ryandrake 2y ago

ATC recording of the incident made it to VASAviation three days ago[1]. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDl5xYidtQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDl5xYidtQQ

JohnMakin 2y ago

I am not a commercial airline pilot but it is a topic of fascination for me for a long time - wouldn't this cause a terrain warning? How were the pilots unaware until ATC told them? Something very strange about this story - I guess fatigue makes sense, but that doesn't explain rerouting to fort lauderdale very well to me. I'll toss out a theory - there has been a pilot shortage for the last several years. Are corners getting cut on pilot training? Incompetence explains a lot. This is a really baffling incident to me on its face and reading some takes from aviation experts it seems like I am not the only one that thinks so.

altgoogler 2y ago
They didn't get a terrian warning because they were landing. Being close to the ground is what they expected. They have both radar & pressure altimeters. What might have happened is that due to the poor weather they thought they were closer to the airport, or they weren't closely following their glide path, or the aircraft was misconfigured for the RNAV approach. Perhaps a combination of the three.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  even 4 miles out from the runway? Thanks I did not know that.
  - p_l 2y ago
    If they are too low according to TAWS map, there would be warning even if they were landing. You can inhibit some of the alerts by switching TAWS into "Terrain Inhibit" mode, but that's usually done for landing at runways outside of TAWS database. That said, TAWS won't fire if you're below airspace-mandated altitude but above "minimally safe" altitude.
bombcar 2y ago
I'm not a commercial pilot but as a private pilot it looks like they were doing a manual approach .... and were lined up with the freeway bridge and attempting to land on it? The blog linked elsewhere looks like a perfect glide path for that ... which you shouldn't be doing. In which case, the terrain warnings would be the standard "you're landing, idiot" noises which wouldn't alert them to anything, because they'd be expecting them.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

nickburns 2y ago

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. This is your, uh, captain (obvious) speaking. It, uh, couldn't be any clearer here, based on all the circumstances, that, uh—these pilots truly believed they had the runway in sight when it was, in fact, the Courtney Campbell Causeway.

ja27 2y ago

The flight path looks like they were approaching for the east-west runway which is pretty rarely used at Tampa so that might have caused some confusion but that's what instruments and ATC are for. If they had to divert, St. Pete Clearwater is right there and big. They probably flew right over it. Orlando and Sarasota are also much closer than Ft. Lauderdale. Maybe they didn't want St. Pete/Clearwater or Sarasota because of weather or Southwest doesn't use them, but Orlando gets plenty of Southwest traffic.

ratg13 2y ago
This is the sticking point for me and somewhat feels like they did this deliberately to erase the cockpit voice recorder so they could try and limit lawsuits and negative press. Most CVRs are overwritten in 2 hours unless it’s a brand new aircraft.

appplication 2y ago

There was another incident recently I recall where the pilots accidentally descended too fast and were seconds from crashing. I can’t recall specifics, but I’m surprised that wasn’t also mentioned in the article.

pljldos 2y ago

[dead]

p_l 2y ago

https://avherald.com/h?article=51b5f8ed&opt=1 https://avherald.com/h?article=51b5f8ed&opt=1 For a more detailed description of the event