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Passengers on Southwest Flight 2786 came within 400 feet of death when a “newer” pilot made his first official mistake on the job. The airline didn’t actually go out of their way to let the public know about the incident, though. It happened on April 11. The flying public is only hearing about it now because Bloomberg got their hands on an internal company memo.
Pilot error to blame
Even the newest commercial pilot should know better than to push the stick forward while flying a jet low over the ocean. Officials aren’t revealing his name but the memo describing what happened indicates “a ‘newer‘ first officer was flying at the time and inadvertently pushed forward on the control column.” Oops.
The Boeing 737 Max 8 operated by Southwest was on a hop from one Hawaiian island to another. On Friday, June 14, Bloomberg reported the federal investigation looking into how it happened.
Flight tracking data confirms that the plane was a mere 600 feet above the waves when it went into a nosedive, “dropping at a rate of more than 4,000 feet per minute.” Luckily, the pilot corrected quickly. According to the memo, the craft “flew as low as 400 feet before rapidly climbing.”
The FAA is investigating after a Southwest flight came within nearly 400 feet of crashing into the ocean off the coast of Hawaii in April. The Boeing 737 Max 8 briefly dropped at an abnormally high rate of more than 4,000 feet per minute before rapidly climbing. pic.twitter.com/wgzEnCI9Co
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) June 14, 2024
The Airline swears up and down that safety is their top priority but wouldn’t explain to CNN how it could happen in the first place or why they kept the memo about it so secret.
“Nothing is more important to Southwest than Safety,” a spokesunit insists. “Through our robust Safety Management System, the event was addressed appropriately as we always strive for continuous improvement.”
They do the best they can with what they have but what can you do when the pilot acts like a suicidal terrorist? They “acknowledged the incident but did not address the memo or why the incident took place.”
FAA doing an investigation
The Federal Aviation Administration is having a rough week. One of their administrators was grilled like a steak in the Senate for failing to investigate safety lapses at Boeing. They acknowledge that they were notified of the Southwest matter “immediately” and already have a file open.
The pilot was scheduled to fly “an inter-island hop from the main Honolulu airport to Lihue airport on the neighboring island of Kauai.”
According to the not-so-secret memo, they couldn’t land on Kauai because of bad weather so the flight crew decided to abort the planned landing.
Southwest Airlines 737 MAX comes within 400 feet of slamming into the ocean off the coast of Hawaii following an aborted landing attempt due to bad weather conditions. pic.twitter.com/Q1MI0o2oE3
— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) June 14, 2024
It’s not clear exactly how the pilot almost made an unscheduled and hard landing in the water. After the little mishap the plane headed back to Honolulu.
This isn’t the first time something similar has happened. The prior event involved a United Airlines flight in December of 2022. Also in Hawaii but departing from a different airport, the pilot “also dove toward the ocean in bad weather, coming 748 feet from disaster.”
On that one, the NTSB concluded that “the pilots miscommunicated about the settings of the airplane’s flaps.” It’s too soon for details on this latest episode.
