Southwest Airlines Flight 1455

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**Southwest Airlines Flight 1455**
Summary
Date	March 5, 2000
Type	Overrun
Site	Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport, Burbank, California
Fatalities	0
Injuries	43
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Boeing 737-3T5
Operator	Southwest Airlines
Tail number	N668SW ^[1]
Passengers	137
Crew	5
Survivors	142(all)

Southwest Airlines Flight 1455 (N668SW) was a scheduled passenger flight from McCarran International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, Nevada to Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport (BUR), Burbank, California that overran the runway during landing.

1 Accident Summary
2 Flight Details
3 Survivability
4 Sources

[edit] Accident Summary

On March 5, 2000 at 1811 Pacific Standard Time Southwest Flight 1455, a Boeing 737, overran the end of the runway while landing at Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport. It crashed through a metal blast wall and then through the airport perimeter wall and came to rest on a four-lane city street near a gas station. There were no serious injuries and no fatalities.

The NTSB concluded that the probable cause for the accident was excessive flight speed and too high of a glidepath, and the flight crew's failure to abort the approach when conditions were not met for a stable landing. Additional responsibility was placed on the flight controller's positioning of the airplane as it approached the airport.

[edit] Flight Details

Flight 1455 departed McCarran International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, Nevada at 1650, more than 2 hours behind schedule due to inclement weather in the area. At 1804:02, when the plane was 19 nm north of the BUR outer marker, the SCT controller instructed the plane to maintain 230 knots or greater until further notice. The controller later indicated this was to place the plane into the approach pattern between two other flights. The captain acknowledged the instructions.

At 1804:42 the first officer informed the captain that the target airspeed for landing would be 138 knots. This value was based on standard procedures in the Southwest Airlines Flight Operations Manual(FOM). At 1805:13 the captain told the first officer that the air traffic controller had instructed them to remain at 230 knots or greater "for a while."

At 1805:54 the controller cleared Flight 1455 to descend to 5000 feet, and at 1807 cleared the flight to descend to 3000 feet. At 1808 the controller cleared the plane for approach. According to the Aeronautical Information Manual, Section 4-4-11, this approach clearance automatically cancelled any previous speed assignments. According to the final accident report, traffic conditions no longer warranted the speed assignment after the controller cleared the flight to descend to 3000 feet, but the controlled did not verbally cancel the speed assignment.

Contributing to the unstable attitude of the plane were controller instructions which placed the aircraft in an unfavorable position for final approach. The NTSB concluded that the controller positioned the airplane too fast, too high, and too close to the runway threshold, although any of these factors could have been compensated for by the pilots.

Southwest Airlines procedures instruct the pilot not flying to make altitude callouts at 1000, 500, 400, 300, 200, 100, 50, 30, and 10 feet. Additionally, callouts are required if certain parameters are not met, in this case flight speed and sink rate. At 1809:32, one minute and thirteen seconds after approach clearance was given, and at 3000 feet of altitude, the captain began to slow the plane by deploying the flaps.

At 1810:24 the ground proximity warning system (GPWS) began to sound a "sink rate" warning in the cockpit. The plane was descending at an angle of 7 degrees, when the angle of descent for most planes landing on that runway was 3 or 4 degrees. Both pilots ignored the warnings. At 1810:44 the warning system in the cockpit began to sound "whoop, whoop, pull up." The captain responded to these warnings with "that's all right."

The captain stated after the accident that he knew as the plane passed 500 feet that he was not "in the slot", meaning the conditions had not been met for a safe landing, in this case because of an excessive airspeed. The captain further stated that he understood that if he was not "in the slot", procedures demanded a go-around maneuver to abort the landing. He could not explain why he did not perform a go-around maneuver. The first officer likewise indicated after the accident that he was aware that they were not "in the slot", but said he believed the captain was taking corrective action.

The plane touched down on the wet runway at about 182 knots, 44 knots over the target airspeed. Furthermore, it touched down 2150 feet from the runway threshold, 650 feet beyond the 1000-1500 ft range established by the Southwest Airlines FOM. The captain deployed the reverse thrusters and then he and the first officer applied manual brakes, but according to the NTSB findings, under those conditions even maximum braking would not have prevented the plane from overrunning the end of the runway.

[edit] Survivability

There were no fatalities in the crash, and no serious injuries. However, one of the forward escape slides inflated inside the cabin at impact, while the plane was still moving. This blocked both forward doors from being used to evacuate the plane, and prevented two flight attendants seated on the forward jumpseat from assisting the evacuation. There was no fire, but had there been a fire, this malfunctioning slide would have dramatically affected the survivability of the occupants. As a result of this occurrence, the NTSB issued a directive to upgrade equipment on the slide compartments of all older Boeing 737 models to the higher standard of later models.