Cockpit Tapes Go Public in Midway Airport Accident
Transcripts of cockpit conversations of a Southwest Airlines plane that crashed in December killing a 6-year-old boy went public yesterday at a hearing conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Investigators are hoping that the cockpit conversations will provide insight into the flight crew’s decision to land at Midway instead of an airport where the weather was better and the runways longer.
The Boeing 737-700 crashed into a car on a street outside the airport after sliding beyond the barriers at the end of a snowy runway during a landing attempt. Joshua Woods, who was in the car with his parents to visit his grandmother in Chicago, died as a result of the impact.
Leroy and Lisa Woods, Joshua’s parents, have filed a lawsuit against Southwest and other parties but have decided not to attend the NTSB hearings.
“The Woods family has been traumatized in a way that is unique. This is a car and airplane crash at Central Avenue and 55 th Street. They had no right to be operating an airplane on the public roads of this city,” said Robert Clifford, the family’s attorney.
The two-day hearings will focus how Chicago aviation officials managed the airport during the snowstorm as well as the information provided to the pilots by the city, the airline’s dispatch center, and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Greg Feith, a former NTSB accident investigator and aviation consultant said the hearing “will look at how the city goes out and evaluates the runway condition in bad weather and how the city reported that the runway was in good condition when it really was fair to nil.”
The safety board will also address how Midway filed to protect planes against runway over-runs. NTSB investigators have determined that the pilots needed an additional 800 feet for a safe landing.
Neither the captain of the plane nor the first officer will be called to testify at the hearings.
“We did interview the captain and the first officer, and there wasn’t a need for them to participate in the hearing. We are addressing other issues with people who are more appropriate for the areas about which we are still trying to gain information,” said
Keith Holloway, NTSB spokesman.