WHAT did The Pilots MISS?! Explaining Southwest Airlines flight 1248 

hello im you big fan can you made malaysia airlines flight 653

Could you please do an episode on the Inex Adria Aviopromet 1308 crash? It was quite complex and I am sure you would enjoy the challenge!

LOVE YOUR VIDEOS PLEASE THE FLIGHT THAT NOSEDIVED INTO A MOUNTAIN IN CHINA RECENTLY!!

Great sponsor

I hope you will have for us in the future a coupon for PMDG or Fenix planes 😋

true (its like the thing)

It didn't actually cap it silently, it highlighted that 8 knots value with a red background as incorrect, and there was also a message at the bottom saying the limit is 5 knots. The pilots just ignored that, and decided to land anyway, even though the tailwind they expected was over 5 knots. Of course, with hindsight, we can think of improvements to that software. Like clearer warnings, and possiblly hiding all the distance calculation results, if the input data is invalid, instead of defaulting to the closest valid input value for those calculations. But these pilots clearly didn't follow their procedures, which didn't allow landing with more than 5 knots of tailwind if any part of the runway had poor braking. Instead, they invented a new procedure, where they apparently took the average of the distance calculations for poor and fair. On top of that, they ignored the red warning for invalid inputs for the poor braking calculations, and just assumed the software would still produce correct results even with illegal inputs. And about calculating correct distances even with the illegal input values, that's not how things work in aviation. The parameter tables to use in such simulations come from the manufacturer (or other technical sources), so as a software developer you can't calculate distances for inputs that are illegal. If you don't have any data to base your calculations on, you can't just guess or invent something, as that's not your field.

@@VladimirNicolici Fair enough. I wasn't paying strict attention to the display and didn't notice the red-highlighted value. Also, what you say about the dangers of extrapolating from the manufacturer's supplied tables is spot on and didn't occur to me. Thank you for taking the time to point out the error in my reasoning, and for doing so in such a cogent and respectful manner. Unfortunately, that sort of thing seems to be becoming rare these days, which is a shame because we can always learn something new from each other. Take care, my friend.

@@VladimirNicolici Nonetheless it should either have produced a correct answer based on the actual input (in parallel with the error message), or refused to produce any answer unless the user manually entered something in bounds. To change to an _optimistic_ alternate interpretation is clearly unsafe, no? Otherwise the tool becomes pointless: just enter any random figures at all, and the simulation brings things in bounds and says, yup, that's fine. Or?

@@stephenspackman5573 Indeed, as I mentioned, not making and distance calculations when the wind speed was out of range would have been better. But I doubt this was a decision the actual software developer made. There is very little freedom when implementing aviation software, you have to follow the specifications to the letter. In any case, after this accident the airline modified the software to do just that, they stopped showing the estimated distances when the wind speed was out of range for the conditions. And they also clearly indicated that reverse thrust is required for those estimations to be valid. There were many other problems not just with the application but also the documentation. The reverse thrust assumption in those calculations has been introduced recently, and the documentation was not yet fully updated to reflect that at the time of the accident. Also, the company decided to make calculations based on performance data that was less conservative than Boeing's recommendations. If they used the data coming from Boeing, it would have shown the distance as insufficient for both the fair and poor runway conditions.

@@TeamSenke on God bro what 76-year-old be on RU-vid watching aviation videos?

@@mohammedfuseini5568 LOL you'd be surprised 🤣Caught my grandad watching RU-vid Videos on Yemeni weapons and army history

keep it up! it's never too late to keep learning and my hat's off to you

​@@mohammedfuseini5568 this simply means there is no limit to learning 😁😁

Totally agree

Lol this one actually did land on top of the car!!!! So i guess sometimes the do!!

been there, seen that

@@teamground0229 I wondered that myself. I have two (admittedly uninformed) guesses. First, that the alternate selection process assumed that conditions bad enough to close MDW would also close ORD - not unreasonable except in the case where the deciding factor is runway length, as it would have been here. Second, alternate airports on the flight plan (as opposed to an emergent in-air decision) might have been limited to airports where Southwest had a presence. While they do have some operations out of ORD now, they didn't at the time of this accident, so ORD may not have been an official alternate for that reason. (Note that I'm differentiating between planned alternates and emergency diversions, which would definitely be "any port in a storm" rather than "nearest airport out of which the airline has operations")

They need to extend the highway all the way to the terminal.

Ski, I'm automatically giving you 90% chicago blue check mark based in that alone.

Is that FS2020? Been trying to find out what Mentour was using for these for weeks. I hot back into it but all I have is FSX and I've been yearning for Xplane 12 or FS 2020 figuring I'd use the one Mentour has because it looks great and way more functionality... though they do probably buy the aircraft seperately? In FSX stock you barely have control over most knobs, not even the autobrake, sometimes not at all or only through key combinations, which I already have scribbled all over my stick along with many functions I put on keys on the stick to avoid using key bindings in difficult phases of flight. If this is 2020 then that looks like a winner. I hope my rusty old 970 can handle halfway decent graphics settings.

I had Microsoft Flight Simulator too. I can agree with how much it has changed from 1997 when I bought it and a flight stick.

@@user-lv7ph7hs7lIt’s not all msfs. Some of his videos use p3d

​@@user-lv7ph7hs7lHe uses both FS2020 and XP12 depending on which one has an addon for the particular aircraft.

I remember being impressed by Super EF2000 on Win95

I was thinking this. It's misleading to give mixed conditions, just go with the most conservative and state the conditions as poor.

Yes but that wouldn’t apply to smaller lighter aircraft with much better minimums for that landing.

That sounds useful.

It sounded it was just a company procedure to use the lower rating, not an industry standard

Those data might be used for other considerations. Beside it is better to have an accurate description of the ground.The captain makes the call, not the airport.

Thank you so much! But I have to credit my incredible visual artist team who helps me put pictures on my stories. Thank you for watching and supporting! 💕

Same happen to me, when I find this Peters chanel for the first time 😅 after two years with this channel, I bet I could try to land passenger plane on the ground, in one or few peaces 😂

@@tjgeduks Nah, if you mastered how to get the radio to work and memorised the emergency frequency then you’re good to land if the weather is good. Programming the autopilot to land for you is easier than working the radio. Of course, if there’s a brisk crosswind or enough turbulence to turn the autopilot off… well. Aim for the sea and don’t bank more than 30 degrees. We might not land, but we can avoid crashing into a city. 😁

Seconded! This is the most amazing channel.

100%! The quality of the content is exceptional. And it's helped me to analyse and solve problems applying the principles used on the flight deck. Fantastic.

As big as the 737 is, the other Boeing planes (777 and 787) are much larger.

​@B Really? I would never have known that an aircraft with a larger number would've meant it was bigger.....🤔

​​@@gooner72777 is as big as 747 and 787 is smaller than both of them, though still bigger than a 737. The middle number is more about generation, chronological order of when the first plane flew rather than performance or size. For instance the first big jet airliner by Boeing was the 707, which influenced almost every liner built after. They all look more or less like a 707, in various sizes with newer engines. Then came 727, 737 and 747 eaely 1960s, 757 after that, midsized, between 747 and 737 and then 767 and 777 is huge bigger than some older 747s and 787 is the latest new model, that's not directly related to a previous one. It's decently large but not close to 777 or 747, it's meant to replace 767 and is about a similar size, wide body but not a full sized jumbo jet like 777. L1011, DC10 etc...

@@K1OIK MDW is the IATA airport code for Chicago Midway International Airport. Like LAX is for Los Angeles and LHR is for London-Heathrow.

Maybe not even the coders fault. They might had no idea under what situations the program was meant to be used, just given a task to program.

@@justinepaula-robilliard As I understand it, It's not entirely true that there was no way to over-ride it. There were other situations where the pilots did recover. Although the point is taken, it was a very bad design decision.

@@justinepaula-robilliard whether the coder made an error or not--and everyone makes errors at some point-- it's the fault of management, not making sure there are checks along the way to prevent such an error effecting the outcomes. Management is often too focused on meeting deadlines and closing deals, and QA costs time and money. And nowadays, beta testing seems to be fobbed off on the end user. So instead of adequate testing that identifies this fault in the program, and steps to fix it, the product is out there endangering lives.

I remember as a very young child in the late 50s going to Midway to see relatives off or pick them up at a time when piston engine aircraft were still dominant. The sight and sound of those big radials both fascinated and frightened me, and I always liked the way the tails of the DC-3s would come up first during the takeoff roll, or go down last while landing. The place seemed huge but by today's standards it's a postage stamp. Hard to believe big jets now go in and out there in a small area surrounded by dense development. But O'Hare was once out in the sticks, and it, too, is now surrounded as well. Oh well, guess nothing stays the same.

New York has that title with JFK and LaGaurdia as well.

Midway can never be as safe as ord. Ord had multiple runways almost 2x the length of mdw runways. Getting stopped by emas is not a freebie.

i ONLY fly swa. always have, except for a couple years in the early 80s. that was a little segue into muse airlines, then transtar. Muse was ex swa anyway, flying md-80s, then transtar (acquired name by swa) so...

Or throw up a big warning that can’t be missed or ignored.

Yes! And if parameter or other is not appropriate, it should present a "cannot calculate, such and such is out of bounds" message in a big red box.

And when it sees you're thinking of landing with 10 knot tailwind on wet runway, just explode the screen with flashing warning lights and sirens.

Yet another software gem, brought to us by geniuses who thought radio altimeter height of -8 ft is A-OK.

Shocking if they didn't cite that as a contributing factor in the official report. Maybe they did and it just didn't make the video

Indeed 😔 If it wouldn’t be for that, this could have been a positive story of lessons learned. Now it turned to a tragedy. Thanks for watching.

FYI saying "thoughts and prayers" is widely considered an insult now, thanks to right wingers using it as a refrain after every school shooting

Thoughts and prayers 🙏

Prayers❤

Glad you think so!

And I love aviation but don't know the technical aspects from the pilot or crews perspective so "yay" I'm learning things. It's so refreshing to upskill & give people the ability to raise their game rather then stagnate or dumb down the majority for the few that only want to know in 5minute bites anyway. 🤔

The other shows under-appreciate the public. Most people like to learn. The idea that pop culture must be dumbed down is silly. People understand all right. Just respect them - do a good job explaining to your audience, and the audience will do just fine.

Everytime we landed at Florence airport in, well, Florence, Italy, I always felt “hot damn, that was hard, abrupt, short and jesus effing christ am I happy no errors were made by the pilots.

Hey there, fellow Chicagoan here! I grew up just two blocks from the barrier separating 63rd Street from the airport, directly under the landing path of Runway 31C and we all wondered afterwards if it was worth it to continue living so close to the airport. My family had that house for nearly 40 years.

Thank you appreciated 🙏

Whoa.....😳

ouch!

Wow!

I flew from Minneapolis to Hawaii. Jan 9. The weather was a whopping 18F. The ground crew was de icing the wings. In big cherry pickers. It took an hour.after first application. I wss praying on take off. Thanks without incident. But going from warm to cold weather, its a trip. Totally different. Pilots have to make so many adjustments.

@John Drew - that's when you say a few thank yous to Jack Steiner and the other Boeing engineers who built the 727 to be a tank with wings. From you post, I take it that you were one of those young seamen? Thank you, sir, for your time given.

I’m on the safety committee for our hospital and I’ve definitely been implementing concepts from these videos. The pre-surgical checklist came from pre-flight check lists after all. I just lead a meeting on active shooters/Code Silvers and I had to stop myself from using the term “memory items.”

Infact, it applies to all fields of life

​@@panosdotnetor, hear me out, you can stop being 12 and actually appreciate people working to make things better and safer.

Probably outsourcing development to the lowest bidder. Classic Boeing.

The tool should’ve permitted 8 knots and given a real answer with a large warning that wind speed was over the limit. That it sneakily changed the value hurt things a lot.

indeed, unforgiveable and glaringly obvious to the simplest fool.....and this was signed off for passenger aviation??!!

Yes, I didn’t hear about that in the „recommendations“ section, which surprised me. I’d say this was THE main cause of the accident.

@@nikpalagaming8610 immature s/w developer I suspect...however this program must have been evaluated and tested by dozens of professionals - how come so many amateur youtubers can spot all these blunders so readily, yet the industry signs them off for use...?!

He’s a trainer? Oh, boy, now a couple things about the “how to land a 747l video he did awhile back, makes sense.

Thank you!

I used to run 737s and if I'm not mistaken the Thrust Reversers (TRs) deploy in about 2 seconds and the engines throttle up in a maximum of 4 seconds.....but in my experience they spool up FAST. way less than 4 seconds. 4 seconds was just the maximum amount of time the manual allows to be within limits. But they go much faster. So in this case, from TR deployment to full reverse thrust..... likely 4 seconds. An eternity at 130 miles per hour. You'd travel 760 feet before you started getting the full benefit of the TRs. Yeah, that'll make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

Glad to hear that. I fly southwest quite often, my family also.Midway sometimes, O hare and jfk msp.

Wasn't this accident the one that made Southwest mandate that the pilot use the HGS through the entire flight? If I remember correctly, the pilot had the combiner in the stowed position.

Yeah, it landed on Central Ave, a four lane road but not exactly a highway. MDW is pretty unique in being in the middle of a residential urban neighborhood.

The city streets surrounded Midway Airport are NOT highways. They are main, multilane, arterial, city streets! With stoplights about every 6 blocks. With speed limits of 30 mph!

@@paulortiz2035 In all fairness, when was the last time you saw anyone obeying that speed limit? I've been southbound on Cicero Avenue, on the other side of the airport and people are screaming by at anywhere between 40-50 MPH.

could be as bad as you having to drive a tesla in that weather and not slide out of control

Yes please! Maybe a good Mentour Now topic???

I would hazard a guess that this increase is simply correlated to the increase in the number of flights. There is also the fact that modern tools make it easier to detect minimal runway excursions that might not have been registers in the old days. (this was mentioned in another Mentour video) When a plane only edges into the paved runoff area by a few metres, it can look from the tower like no runway excursion has taken place, but nowadays, in modern airports, there are detection mechanisms at the end of the runway itself which will catch the smallest transgression. That being said, runway excursions are still extremely rare, with fewer than 20 incidents/year across the world in the 2009-2013 period (on average 0,57 incidents for 1 million sectors based on 2009-2013 IATA data and this average is skewed by the poor performance of Russian and African operators (respectively 1,45 & 3,98 incidents/million sectors))

I would guess that overconfidence in technology is a major factor. I've seen a trend over the last decades in several areas that people, especially younger, put 100 % trust in anything that comes out of a computer and/or assumes that the computer only accepts valid inputs. Don't get me wrong, computers and technology are wonderful tools that allows us to do things that wouldn't be possible otherwise but a bit of sanity and allowance for external variation must be included. We see one clear example in this video, they enter one figure into the computer and then trusts the output fully (and then some). That the application adopted the wind figure without a major warning is a serious error in the program in my opinion - it should have given an information window like "entered tailwind above permitted value, verify input).

Maybe an over reliance on automated functions. I’ve watched a few documentaries about flying that mention pilots are increasingly lacking functional skills because they don’t need to practice them as often due to the computer doing it for them.

@@sharg0 Just to add to your comment. Likely a mix of using these computers allows us to get near max landing ability but you loose the safety margin of the pilot's decision skills (sounds like before this the old way was the pilots' gut feeling) but now if a PC says it is fine to land they trust the 'hard numbers' instead forgetting that humans & equipment (tire grip, no blow out, ABS allowing max braking when in some cases it can be worst then manually doing it but is very rare, pilots forgetting or doing something late, reversers being slow to open or don't at all due to equipment braking, landing late on the runway). The FAA knows this and requires a built in 15% safety factor into the PC cals but personally feel that 15% in the dry is likely fine but should be 25% in icy/snowy/extreme wet weather and 20% in normal wet conditions. If those pilots didn't have a PC telling them they are fine to land then good chance they would thought it wasn't safe and landed at an alt airport. Also it might be a good idea for pilots to be trained to try and keep an additional safety factor ontop of the PC's report - ie they need at least 500ft of runway left no matter the PC's cal results and should reconsider landing options if they are under that 500ft remaining per the PC cals. Trying to get max performance and using hard numbers is great if we lived in a prefect World, but we don't and just need either higher margins built in those tools or train pilots to make the final call (as if expected of them; but they tend to forget that applies to certain aspects like a landing cal from a PC) & remind them safety if better then risking it. Of course something like this is rare so changing it to affect businesses (cost $$ to keep landing at alt airports for something that might happen in a 1 in 100,000 flights) so you got to play both sides (FAA) because if safety was #1 then we wouldn't fly ever for due that one in a million chances of a crash. Either way; I do put some blame on the cap for using a tool for the first time in extreme conditions (and wasn't required to use it yet) if he wanted to try it [auto brake system aka ABS] out he should of waited for a sunny day, then next on a wet day, then lastly a icy/snow day since he was 'testing it' -- or better yet in a sim if he had sim time coming up -- don't blame him for trusting the PC cal but he should of added his own safety margin ontop of its results - either of those could have avoided it. However, I'm annoying the FFA allowed for basically no run off space at this airport they should of downsized the runway or installed the break-away cement and not approving it with no safety factor. TL;DR if you keep using systems and taking away safety factor/margin from everything then of course crashes happen (no safety margin in the landing PC cal, no safety margin in runway runoff length).

Hah, welcome to the rabbit hole! All my life I had zero interest in flying due to being a nervous flyer until February or so and I realised aviation is actually fascinating. Then I found this channel and 74gear and have been soaking up information like a sponge. And then I actually got a job at my local airport and I’m due to start training on Monday. My feet will remain solidly on the ground though.

I always felt umm, not entirely comfortable flying in larger passenger jets but my partner worked in the pilot training department for Air New Zealand many years ago & 1 treat was being invited to have a session in a 737 simulator which was amazing (the takeoff gave me the exact light butterflies feeling I always get) the hardest thing for me being attempting to steer the plane to line up for takeoff but the best experience was being invited to the cockpit (showing the age now, the Boeing being analogue also) and looking out from the pilots perspectives & watching procedures, the pilots explaining as we went gave me enough insight to feel so much more comfortable overall. Less fear or the unknown? Maybe seeing the pilots confidence, procedures & checks.

Welcome to a whole new world of far away destination & exploration. Enjoy.

My Dad used to take us near the airport to watch planes take off & land as kids ⁶ years old. 1958 at JFK . I was always fascinated by the planes. My father did not like to fly or fly. It was just a cheap entertainment for 6 kids. I never got to fly until i got a job and paid my own fare after graduation. I was about 20 & still in college. I went on to the Air Force and became an aircraft mechanic and later a Cessna student. Flying is fun. You got to try it to understand. Get the bug.

Yep. I watch for pretty much the same reason. Was a nervous flyer..but now not so much. Having an understanding of how planes fly and land has made me more rational in the air.

I can't imagine walking around a building and seeing a huge aircraft chilling in the road.. I would think I was dreaming. The closest my car has ever been to a airplane was on i20 going through shreveport. There was a 747 who was a little short of the runway and the wheels hit some lights right as we went by. It landed on the runway and no one was hurt... except for us on the interstate who had heart attacks.

Fate speaks loudly. Huh?

I was in a car on van wyck near JFK new york. A plane sailed right over the car and had us ducking it was so low. It barely cleared and landed.

Thank you Miranda! That’s great to hear 💕

@@MentourPilot No worries, I had a friend in the 90s who was a Lufthansa pilot. He once suggested to me that I pop the emergency door before I got off a commercial flight because the pilots would always try and fix it themselves rather than letting the ground staff do it. He thought it would be funny.

You do get a good look at a Burger King too coming in lol. I've flown in there so many times. Super short.

It is an awareness feature that all jets that I know of have. I've been flying jets for about 4 years now and have never seen a captain or first officer forget to use the thrust reversers in the manner which happened in this accident. Something like that is incredibly rare.

If operating as designed then it would provide helpful feedback to the pilot that reverse thrust is not available yet, and keep the position of each lever matching the state of each engine. If one reverser door suffered a failure and couldn't open, and the other worked normally, we'd want the pilot to notice they have only one handle moving (asymmetrical reverse thrust). You could almost have it both ways with a detent that automatically operates the reverser as soon as the door finishes opening, but it would have to move to a fixed setpoint.

Agreed

The problem specific to the 737 is that I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a mechanical linkage between the thrust reversers and the “throttle” of the engines. Imagine if there was no stop and one of the doors was malfunctioning. You’d stab open the thrust only to find a severe yaw to one side as one engine attempts to reverse thrust and the other is pushing the plane forward.

@@asamyers4572 Lauda Air Flight 004. It happens.

Check out “ Green Dot.” It is also well done.

"As a pilot, how do you reconcile the death of others due one’s own mistakes?" Robin, in my opinion most aviation incidents are rarely the fault of one individual. In this case the training the pilots received from the airlines was probably partially to blame. As someone else said the ATC system should have reported runway braking conditions as "poor".....the conservative figure. The software program defaulted the tail wind to 5 knots without really flagging that to the pilots. These airliners are complex transportation systems. A LOT goes into a flight from point A to point B. There is literally an army of people behind the scenes and onboard the aircraft to make it happen.

😀

I was thinking something similar, more passengers & cargo per flight, people getting heavier.. Cramming planes for (financial) efficiency, until someone dies and the rules get changed again.

I thought that passenger weight couldn't possibly matter. But a 747 only weighs 187 metric tons. At 500 passengers, assuming each is 20kg heavier, that already makes for 10 metric tons difference, or 5% - not all that much, but certainly noticeable.

Fat Karens

Hopefully he will answer this on Mentour Now

Increased air traffic congestion may play a part. I would speculate that financial pressure is a factor as well. With increasingly thin operating margins, no airline wants to accept a diversion with its associated costs and knock-on effect to the schedule unless it absolutely has to.

I lived only 10 minutes away in a 2nd floor and the flights coming on seemed like they could land on the roof.

I’m not sure, I’m any case it was not noticed by the crew.

Wouldn't be surprised if it were a "they know they can't go over 5, so nobody is going over 5, cap it at 5" situation. I'd want the program to throw a very ominous warning, but still allow for using out-of-range values.

@@Fay7666 Thanks Efrain

@@MentourPilot Thankyou Mentor Pilot

@@Fay7666 I've programmed a lot of database interfaces and you generally either make it so the entire input is rejected when you type something wrong (which many will recognize from online forms) or so it attempts to adjust values into a valid range, BUT making those automatic corrections without clear notification or warning for the user is terrible practice, and yet it happens quite often. I personally believe in bright in-your-face warnings when doing those automatic corrections, but for something like an aircraft it really should flash "no can do" warning with everything that's wrong with the chosen options. Never ever guesstimate values when lives depend on it

Thank you so much for those kind words. 💕

The $300 per month rent is worth the risk.

Hi! I fly from Girona to Brussels on the 14th of June 😉

thanks a lot for your reply!! I’ll be there 😊😊

Hope you get good footage :)

@@ZombieSazza me too 😊, hopefully the active runway will be a good one for spotting here in Brussels

@@aviation2everybody I am also doing spotting in EBBR :D

Thank you Karen! That’s nice to hear 💕

My guess as to why they are increasing? Airplanes pressuring pilots to land at the desired airport at all costs, and trying to dissuade them from diverting in poor conditions, presumably for financial motives.

Well… sometimes I miss it with a day or two 😂 Thank you for watching!

This accident actually lead to the firing of a CPD sergeant who took a photo of herself posing in front of the wreckage. I'm not sure if she was one of the first responders or if she had just shown up later that evening to see the plane for herself, but it was not in good taste to be using the crash of a jet onto a city street as a chance to get a photo op, especially when it ended up killing a child.

Definitely in poor taste. I worked for CPD as well, long after this incident though. We were always told that we are one camera phone away from an indictment. Silly that some people have to be reminded by this. Tough job, but every organization has their 10%.

the 50-70 mph downtown is true, but that's due to the wind tunnel effect of the high buildings. Not just the windspeed, but that it is whipped around by the skyscrapers. Not the case outside the loop. What are the actual conditions at Midway?

planes and planes and planes

You aren’t kidding there. The one time that I had to drive in blizzard conditions at night on slippery roads… Well because I started out in a big empty car park I actually tested my car’s performance and how different everything felt by basically sliding on purpose while I had space and safety to try. Even after that testing I was still scared but had to do it anyway or be stuck in a very cold situation. Obviously I survived and got home safely but because my street was quite a steep hill I parked at the top where the road was flat and walked the rest. Still one of the hairier situations I’ve ever been in.

If only passenger cars had thrust reversers. 😉

@@skyhawk_4526 That might have helped! Having a way to stop that didn’t rely on friction might have helped. On the other hand I opted to drive no faster than 20mph unless I was having to build up speed in order to clear the crest of the hill, which I’d learnt from Ice Road Truckers of all things. But until that night I really didn’t have the full idea of exactly how much vehicles skid on ice. Where I live snow is really uncommon and barely happens once or twice a year. An actual howling blizzard after a few cold nights to form ice is virtually unheard of and I was still young enough to have never driven on ice before that night. Yet, thinking “this might be sketchy, I’m going to test this while I’m in a safe place” probably also really helped. And recognising my limits first. “So I probably could go down my street and reach my home safely, but I don’t know if I have the skill to drive out tomorrow and the bottom of the street is probably going to be blocked by the cars of people who had to bail. Better if I leave it on a flat bit of terrain and walk the rest.” But the idea of being in a much bigger vehicle that flies, goes way too fast and no real ability to turn into a skid is even scarier.

Oh wow, would you look at that, runway 31C on MDW is just barely under 2000 meters long :P On a more serious note, true. From this perspective it does make it sound less realistic, but that's coming from a person who doesn't use knots or feet daily, so the numbers - while consistently used in and between videos - do go slightly above my head for actually *understanding* the actual figures they represent.

I don't mean to question your calcs but yea, sb 400-500m 'slack' depending on trau-0 where the plane was supposed to be sticking in or sliding into the tarmac; and it did burn up some runway when it finally did

The fist time I

@@K1OIK its a small airport thats why southwest lands there. i use to fly from midway a lot and can confirm that this is true

If you try landing at the very beginning of a runway, you run the risk of coming too low and crashing before the runway, which might have trees or even buildings. When you feel it's necessary, though, it's absolutely part of the "short field landing" technique.

@@TheHenryFilms Also, in addition to the landing low or early issue, most people don't realize that the big jets take a while to accelerate up and there is lag, so if a pilot was aiming low and then was coming in even lower than that, increasing thrust might not provide enough additional lift to make it to the runway if they were already trying to land early. It is hard to judge exactly when inputs don't immediately respond and output is delayed.

the reason is simply to prevent routine undershoot, which itself can be disastrous if before tarmac start.....however... Emergency landing protocol should permit a large % of this area (preferably automatically, using height, distance & speed feedback with possible pilot over rule)

@@TheHenryFilms are you a pilot?

@@gruanger are you a pilot?

Those guys forgot to pull both thrust levers to idle. They left the right engine in climb thinking the autothrottle would do it, it of course didn't.

this is such a good point. 18 seconds is a long time

Now imagine you've just moved from an automatic to a manual for the first time since you took your test years and years ago and this is your first drive out. Your going to make screwups as you struggle with making sure your using the clutch correctly. The distraction factor of the autobrake was clearly major factor once they where on the runway.

A car is pretty different. You can easily hear the engine revving up when you downshift. The pilots in a commercial jet sits fairly far from the engines and they are wearing very good headphones.

No, youre not missing anything! Should've realuzed it.

You sound like you would make an amazing pilot, just like every other armchair critic. Backseat drivers🤮

In this video, they are using Microsoft Flight Simulator (AKA: MSFS2020 or FS2020) along with the separately purchased Boeing 737-700 model made by PMDG (Precision Manuals Development Group) which offers very high-quality realistically modeled aircraft for various flight simulator programs.

meh cause then they wouldn't have to work as hard that's why🤣🤣🤣

In fact it should be automatic and not even require pilot input. As soon as the aircraft touches down safely, the reverse thrust activates. Take the human equation out of it completely. Also integrate AI so the aircraft warms you based on info from tower, that you can’t land on the runway

@@bluepurplepink if a go around is needed, it would add to the time before sleeve is back, engines can spool up. That's why. It has to be manual decision.

@@bluepurplepink Have you seen this pilot's other video about what happens when thrust reversers accidentally deploy in flight? No way should that be triggered automatically

@@bluepurplepink well once the reverser deploys you can't go around anymore. So no it shouldn't be automatic.

We flew there past year. March 2022. Hanks it was safe in bad weather. They did apply thrust reversers immediately. It must have been after the briefing about auto braking. They should practice on simulator first not on peoples lives.

Thank you for that story! 💕

“Throw in low vis. and runway clutter on a 737 and it gets real challenging”. … plus tail wind in this case. Why doesn’t the industry consider this an automatic divert, or an outright flight cancellation due to weather, instead of just becoming ever more “challenging” until something breaks. The “carrier” landing mentality also seems dangerous given widespread former military pilots, because carrier aviation and military mission critical thinking has aspects inappropriate to commercial aviation: flight must occur, landing must occur here on this carrier and now. This SWA flight did not need to occur, nor this landing at this airport.

@@Nill757 In this particular case the crew was not up to speed on the auto-brake system. Many aircraft landed before this flight without incident. I understand your thought process but professional pilots are paid and expected to operate in such conditions and do so without peril on a daily basis. Like all accidents not one thing was the culprit but several red flags that created the end result. The crew was unfamiliar with the Boeing auto-brake system, landing data was what I call "fuzzy math" and then there was a tailwind and reduced braking action. The slow reaction of the reverse thrust was a big contributor, when you land at an airport like MDW even when the reverser's deploy promptly you almost feel like they weren't fast enough. I don't need to go on, Mentour Pilot has done a good thorough report on this. I only commented because I was there that night.

@@Kevin_747 I recognize the high level capability of professional pilots. I’ve been close to them for years, via designing gear for mil aviation. In this instance, it’s troubling to to see the response, ‘other aircraft landed without incident’, which is the case in every system with fundamental flaws which are excused away, like the Bhopal chemical disaster, or the countless coal mine collapses until that industry finally corrected itself. Similarly the unfamiliarity of this crew with the braking system is not an excuse for the accident. Every professional comes up against unfamiliar terrain, which means recognizing those limitations and backing off. Here, this crew *knew* and discussed experience limitations, which a safety focus meant diversion to O’hare w longer runways, or simply grounding the flight. Instead, Im inclined to believe as you suggest that the cockpit mindset was, ‘we’re professionals who perform without peril’, all the way through the runway excursion and into that car with the boy. There are several sincere ways to view this accident. Mine, is that the industry’s remarkable modern safety record is now brewing hubris, is growing increasingly brittle via ‘train detail 99, patch cockpit glitch 101 instead of growing robust, is increasingly pushing up against the limitations of crews who can’t train on infinite detail, is increasingly immune to criticism via ‘we grow safer from accidents’.

@@Nill757 by "carrier landing," the guy is only describing the extreme deceleration when landing on a dry runway with MAX autobrake selected. He's not talking about anyone's "mentality."

Thank YOU for watching and supporting the work we do! Best of luck with your training.

Me too! I want to take flying as a hobby along with my career when i grow up.

The runway in question at Midway is a bit over 6500 ft long. FWIW ~100 times per day 737's & A320's (plus a few widebody cargo jets) land at SNA in Southern California on its 5700 ft main runway. Those are typically down to taxi speed well before the end of the runway without having to brake especially hard. OTOH, SNA braking conditions are almost always excellent.

@@marcmcreynolds2827 SNA is the shortest runway in the country a B737 will land on. And as you point out being in the Los Angeles area, there is never going to be a weather related issue such as snow / ice on the runway making it tougher to stop. Heck, it doesn't even rain in LA hardly at all anymore due to global warming. I think something to consider is when you touch down at landing speed in say a B737, you are covering a lot of distance fast when you first touch down. At those speeds, it doesn't take a lot of degradation in total braking force to start eating up a lot more runway to stop. So when you consider the plane I was in touching down at Midway in snowy conditions and the brakes just don't work as well, 6,500 ft quickly becomes a rather short runway to be trying to land on. Then when you consider taking off, there is the question of how far you are flying and total plane load. I was flying across country and into the wind / jet stream, so loaded down with fuel and on a completely full flight, so the plane was probably loaded to the max for what could take off from that runway. I have seen a chartered B747 for example take off from a military base destined for Iraq back when that war was raging. The plane was packed to the max with marines and all of their gear and a full tank of fuel to basically fly half way around the world. It used up a 12,000 ft runway and then slowly lumbered into the sky. Usually when I see a B747 take off, it needs a lot less runway and takes off at a much steeper angle, but not that B747 with the load it had on it.

@@ChaJ67 "so the plane was probably loaded to the max for what could take off from that runway" Yes, I've seen Southwest deny boarding to passengers at Midway in order to stay under a particular weight. "It used up a 12,000 ft runway and then slowly lumbered into the sky." I once watched from the side of a 15,000 ft runway as a 747 used up most of that, laden with a shuttle orbiter on top : ) That flight went at the crack of dawn, needing every advantage it could get including cool air.

Thank you for supporting Svein!

I'm surprised they didn't go around as soon as they saw the 11km tailwind, that was above their calculations which stated only 40m of runway left. simple math should have told them to abort

That is a good question, could they have made a go around at all after realizing their braking issues?

@@sharg0 I would say that for 99% of the landing a go around would’ve been a terrible decision. Of course they should’ve gone around before they touchdown and maybe even five seconds after they touchdown, but anything after that would’ve been bad.

@@RaindropsBleeding I would have initiated a SNAFU and alternated to Kansas..

@@RaindropsBleeding The wind changed direction, it was not 11 knots tailwind. It was still about the same.

Yes , when a difficult landing was expected this was not the time to be implementing a new procedure with the uncertainty this brings . This distracted the captain at a critical stage of the landing resulting in the delayed application of reverse thrust which was the main reason for the accident . Poor judgement by the crew !