Plane From BWI Skids Off Runway In Chicago
Southwest Flight Landed Amid Heavy Snow, Wind

POSTED: 8:50 pm EST December 8, 2005
UPDATED: 10:01 pm EST December 8, 2005



CHICAGO -- A plane that departed from Baltimore skidded off the runway in Chicago late Thursday evening amid heavy snow and wind.

WBAL-TV 11's sister station in Chicago, WMAQ-TV, reported the aircraft skidded off the runway at Midway Airport, which is 10 miles from the downtown area. Reports indicate that the plane may have made a hard landing before skidding off the runway.



The Southwest Airlines Flight 1248 originated from Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport, departing at about 5 p.m.


According to the Chicago Fire Department, 98 people were aboard the plane and none of them were injured. Authorities have since evacuated all passengers safely. Fire officials said at least one person in the vehicle may have been injured.

Katie Duda was a passenger aboard the plane who said she evacuated safely. She told WMAQ that everyone on the plane was calm during the ordeal.

"We were just landing, we were in a holding pattern because there was a lot of snow on the runway," she said. "It was a little bit rough, but it was nothing out of the ordinary ... it got really bumpy and then we heard a crashing sound, and the next thing I knew, it looked like we were in the middle of an intersection."

Federal aviation officials said the plane crashed through a fence at the airport at about 7:10 p.m., struck as many as two cars along 55th Street at Central Avenue. Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said at least one person in a vehicle on the ground was seriously hurt.

NBC News reporter Michelle Kosinski said the plane ended up against a pole with the car pinned underneath. She said the snow began falling at a heavy pace at about 3 p.m.

Fire authorities said a severely-damaged aircraft engine is on the ground and the plane's nose is crushed. Fire authorities also said an investigation continues to determine why snow was not immediately cleared from the runway.

The airport has since reported 7 inches of snow.

http://www.thewbalchannel.com/news/5497038/detail.html

Apparently a 6 year old child who was in a car on the road that the 737 slipped onto, has died. Very sad. There are several individuals with injuries including a few on the plane.

December 9, 2005


Indiana boy dies in airport mishap

Associated Press
CHICAGO -- Midway International Airport was up and running this morning, less than 11 hours after a Southwest Airlines jet trying to land amid heavy snow plowed off a runway and into a street, killing a 6-year-old boy from northwestern Indiana.
At least 10 other people were injured in the Thursday evening crash, authorities said. The accident closed the airport, Chicago's second largest after O'Hare International, overnight. It reopened at 6 a.m. CST Friday, Aviation Department spokeswoman Wendy Abrams said.


Midway's baggage areas were piled with luggage from canceled flights, but most of the flights on Friday's departure board were listed as on time, with a few cancellations and delays. The lines to receive boarding passes were fairly long, especially at the Southwest's ticket counter.
Urs Hofstetter, 36, of Chicago arrived at Midway less than two hours before his 8:20 a.m. Southwest flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
"It's been great," he said. "It's business as usual."
Flight 1248 from Baltimore touched down at Midway International Airport around 7:15 Thursday night. Though the airport had about 7 inches of snow, aviation officials said conditions at the time were acceptable.
Mike Abate, 35, of suburban Milwaukee, said he could see from the plane that a man was carrying an injured child and that other people were taken away in an ambulance.
"We were safe on the plane," Abate said. "The toughest part was to realize that someone was under the belly of the plane."
Five crew and 98 passengers were aboard the plane, authorities said. Most were evacuated through the plane's inflatable slides in blowing snow, while others used stairs at the rear of the plane, said Chicago Fire Department Spokesman Larry Langford. The plane's nose was crushed, and a severely damaged engine was strewn on the ground, he said.
The Boeing 737 remained in the street Friday morning, where National Transportation Safety Board investigators were expected to arrive later, Abrams said.
Of the 10 injuries reported, eight were on the ground and two were in the plane.
Two adults and three children, including the boy who died, were riding in the pinned vehicle and were taken to Advocate Christ Hospital. The boy was identified as 6-year-old Joshua Woods of Leroy, Ind., said Sandra Flowers of the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.
Three people were treated and released by this morning, while one remained at the hospital, said spokesman Mike Maggio. He said the family had asked that the remaining patient's condition not be released.
Three victims from the other car were released and a fourth was in good condition at Holy Cross Hospital, spokeswoman Michelle Boyd said.
Two plane passengers were treated and released from McNeal Hospital in Berwyn, hospital spokeswoman Esther Corpuz said. A tow truck driver who stopped to help plane passengers also was treated and released for a foot injury, Corpuz said.
Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said the plane had circled Midway for 30 to 35 minutes because of the weather and the flight traffic before it was cleared for landing on the airport's 6,500-foot runway. The airport, surrounded by homes and businesses, has shorter runways than most major airports, because it was originally built to handle smaller propeller planes. The larger ones land at O'Hare.
"There are no indications that there are any maintenance problems with that aircraft whatsoever," Kelly said. He said the plane had a service check Wednesday in Phoenix.
Snow caused trouble Thursday for travelers across the Midwest, with as much as 10 inches on the ground in some areas. The system was moving eastward early Friday.
The accident occurred 33 years to the day after a crash at Midway that killed 45 people, two of them on the ground.
In that crash, a United Airlines jet struck tree branches about a mile from the airport, then hit the roofs of a number of bungalows before plowing into a home, bursting into flames. Eighteen passengers survived.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051209/NEWS01/512090537

Posted 12/10/2005 8:20 AM



Midway accident spotlights short runways
CHICAGO (AP) "” A combination of thick snow and relatively short runways at Midway International Airport can make landing a plane a daunting task for even veteran pilots, requiring precision and allowing scant room for missteps.

A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 rests nose first in the intersection of W. 55th Street and Central Ave. after it skidded off Runway 31C.
Charles Rex Arbogast, AP

After Thursday's deadly runway accident involving a Southwest Airlines jet at the hemmed-in airport, some experts are calling for new buffer zones or other safety measures to give pilots at Midway and hundreds of other airports a wider margin for error.

The Boeing 737 was landing in a snowstorm when it slid off the end of the runway, plowed through a fence and struck two cars near a busy intersection. A 6-year-old boy in one of the cars was killed and 10 people, most on the ground, were injured.

"His father looked out and saw a turbine engine turning right outside his window," Ronald Stearney Jr., the attorney for the family, said Friday.

The National Transportation Safety Board said the cause of the accident was under investigation. The plane's voice and data recorders were sent to Washington for analysis and hold "pristine" information for investigators, NTSB member Ellen Engleman Conners said.

But much of the attention initially focused on the 6,500-foot runway. Midway "” built in 1923 and surrounded by houses and businesses "” is among nearly 300 U.S. commercial airports without 1,000-foot buffer zones at the ends of its runways. Most lack the room to create adequate buffers.

Safety experts say such airports can guard against accidents by instead using beds of crushable concrete that can slow an aircraft if it slides off the end of a runway.

The concrete beds "” called Engineered Material Arresting Systems "” are in place at the end of 18 runways at 14 airports. They have stopped dangerous overruns three times since May 1999 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

"We think it's incumbent on airports that don't have the room for these safety areas to at least put in one of these systems," said Jim Hall, NTSB chairman from 1993 to 2001.

Hall said the lack of a 1,000-foot overrun area and the absence of the concrete beds would likely be a focus of the investigation.

"It's a tragedy that did not have to occur," he said.

A recently passed federal law seeks to encourage more airports to build concrete beds or extend their runway barriers by requiring them to do one or the other by 2015.

Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Wendy Abrams could not immediately say whether an arresting system had been considered at Midway.

Though the airport had about 7 inches of snow, aviation officials said conditions at the time were acceptable. Southwest chief executive Gary Kelly said the plane showed no signs of maintenance problems.

The plane's ground speed was 152 miles per hour as it landed and it hit the fence at about 46 miles per hour, she said.

Some pilots say relatively short runways like Midway's pose a challenge in icy or snowy weather, forcing them to touch down as close as possible to the beginning of the runway to allow more braking time.

"It's not a place you can be a little off," said Richard Ward, a retired United Airlines pilot who occasionally flew into Midway years ago. "You don't have the variable of a long runway to correct any errors."

Investigators will determine the exact spot where the plane touched down through simulation, Conners said.

Southwest said the 59-year-old captain piloting Thursday's flight has been with the airline for more than 10 years, and the 35-year-old first officer has flown with Southwest for 2 1/2 years. It was the first fatal crash in Southwest's 35-year history.

Some safety experts said the size of the runway should not be used as a scapegoat.

"It is not the runway length that's the issue," said Bernard Loeb, who was director of aviation safety at the NTSB during the mid-1990s. "Runways are either adequate or they're not."


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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-12-10-midway-runways_x.htm

Posted 12/10/2005 10:29 PM




NTSB: Reverse thrusters not working properly when plane slid off runway

CHICAGO (AP) "” The reverse thrusters that should have slowed a Southwest Airlines jetliner before it slid off a runway at Midway Airport and into the street didn't immediately kick in when the pilots tried to deploy them, federal investigators said Saturday after interviewing the crew.


How much of a role that braking equipment played in Thursday's deadly accident wasn't immediately clear, though, and the investigation is continuing.

The plane's flight attendants told investigators that the Boeing 737 didn't appear to slow after it touched down at Midway in a snowstorm Thursday, said Robert Benzon, the National Transportation Safety Board's investigator in charge.

"They all said it was a smooth landing but they could sense a lack of deceleration," Benzon said.

He said the pilots told investigators they began applying the brakes manually as soon as they noticed that the plane wasn't slowing properly. The plane, with 98 passengers aboard, slid through a fence and into street traffic, where it killed a six-year-old boy in a car.

Because of the blowing snow, none of the air traffic controllers actually saw the plane land, but more than 10 cameras have been identified that could provide additional information, including details about the runway conditions, Benzon said.

On Saturday, workers used a crane with a sling to lift the damaged airliner off the city street and into a hangar for further inspections.

Southwest said the captain piloting Thursday's flight has been with the airline for more than 10 years, and the first officer has flown with Southwest for 2{ years. It was the first fatal crash in the airline's 35-year history.

The plane had been landing in a snowstorm when it slid off the end of the 6,500-foot runway, plowed through a fence and struck two cars. Ten people, most of them on the ground, were injured and the boy was killed in a car driven by his father.

The plane's voice and data recorders were sent to Washington for analysis, NTSB member Ellen Engleman Conners said.

Though the airport had about 7 inches of snow at the time, aviation officials said conditions were acceptable. Southwest chief executive Gary Kelly said on Friday that the plane had recently had a maintenance check and showed no signs of problems.

Midway "” built in 1923 and surrounded by houses and businesses "” is among nearly 300 U.S. commercial airports without 1,000-foot buffer zones at the ends of runways.

Safety experts suggest the airports guard against accidents by using beds of crushable concrete that can slow an aircraft if it slides off the runway's end.

The crushable concrete beds "” called Engineered Material Arresting Systems "” are installed at 18 runways at 14 airports. They have stopped dangerous overruns three times since May 1999 at Kennedy Airport in New York.

Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Wendy Abrams could not immediately say whether an arresting system had been considered at Midway.

Some pilots say relatively short runways like Midway's pose a challenge in icy or snowy weather, forcing them to touch down as close as possible to the beginning of the runway to allow more braking time.

"It's not a place you can be a little off," said Richard Ward, a retired United Airlines pilot who occasionally flew into Midway. "You don't have the variable of a long runway to correct any errors."


http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-12-10-midway-crash_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA