Pilots Warned About Ill. Runway Conditions

Two Southwest Airlines pilots received conflicting reports on runway conditions as they approached Chicago's Midway airport, where their jet skidded off the runway and killed a 6-year-old boy, according to the cockpit voice recording transcript released Tuesday.

The National Transportation Safety Board is looking into procedures for landing at short or slippery runways as a result of the Dec. 8 accident, in which the jet landing in snowy conditions crashed through a fence into the street, killing Joshua Woods of Leroy, Ind., who was riding in a car.

As the pilots prepared to land, the snow got worse and they were told at various points on their way to Chicago that the runway conditions were good, fair and poor.

They knew they couldn't land safely if the conditions were poor because there was an 8-knot tailwind, and they calculated the distance they needed to land assuming poor conditions.

The pilot's eagerness to land, though, may have affected their decision making, according to the transcript.

``If it's poor, we don't want to hear it,'' said co-pilot Steven Oliver.

During the hearing, safety officials were told that there is no single, reliable way to measure a runway's slickness in bad weather, making it hard for pilots to figure out how much room they need to land.

The transcript of the cockpit voice recorder revealed the unfolding drama in the cockpit as the plane skidded toward a fence.

``Son of a (expletive),'' captain Bruce Sutherland said.

``Jump on the brakes, are ya?'' Oliver said.

Pilots then struggled to slow the airplane, then told each other to ``hang on'' just seconds before the airplane crashed through a fence.

During the flight, the pilots wrestled with the question of how they would land in bad weather at Midway, even considering other airports, according to the recording.

The Midway runway, like about 300 others at commercial airports in the United States, did not have a 1,000-foot buffer zone at the end for airplanes that overshoot their landings.

And the pilots of the Boeing 737 relied on a flawed landing technique that should be banned, according to the NTSB.

The safety board will try to determine the best procedures for landing on wet runways and investigate what to do about runways that lack buffer zones. Industry, airline and federal and municipal officials were to testify.

Since the accident, the Federal Aviation Administration has proposed stricter standards for landings by passenger jets.

The proposal would require pilots to add 15 percent to the length of runway they think they need to land safely. The agency had found that half of all U.S. airlines don't have procedures for assessing dangerous runway conditions that develop after takeoff.

The FAA has also given a $15 million grant to Midway to build soft concrete beds that can slow airplanes that overshoot runways.

The Associated Press