"We Never Talk About Any Of That Stuff..."
They're over: two days
of hearings into a deadly mishap at Midway airport, where a
Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700 ran off the end of the runway and
onto a busy Chicago street.
It happened on December 8, 2005... a snowy night in Chicago. In
fact, Flight 1248 didn't take off from Baltimore on time because of
weather delays in Chicago.
Once airborne, the condition of the runways at Midway was a
topic for frequent discussion between Captain Bruce Sutherland and
First Officer Steven Oliver along the way.
There was a lot of radio chatter between Flight 1248 and the
ground on that topic as well.
"Wow. Wooo. If it's poor it's scary," Oliver told Sutherland
about Midway's runway conditions midway into the flight.
"I ain't doin' it," replied Sutherland, a 26-year career pilot
in the Air Force pilot, before joining Southwest in 1995. At 59, he
was one year shy of the FAA-mandated retirement age at the time of
the accident.
As Aero-News reported
Tuesday, the reported condition of Midway's Runway
31-Center waivered throughout the flight, between "poor" to
"good," with variable tailwinds. As a result... the crew got
various stories about the slickness of the runway... all of them
subjective.
Mark Rosenker is acting Chairman of the NTSB. In an exclusive
interview with Aero-News... he says that's one aspect of the
accident that will clearly get a lot of attention as the safety
board digests what it's heard over the past two days.
"We had, I think, a very productive hearing," Rosenker (above)
said. "We haven't done the specific analysis yet... so we have to
take a look specifically and analyze what the cockpit voice
recorder said, analyze any of the commuications between the airport
and the cockpit crwew, and recognize what dispatch provided."
Listen To ANN's Exclusive Interview With
Acting NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker
Rosenker added the NTSB has not yet determined the exact
conditions of the runway on that fateful December night -- but in
an eerie foreshadowing of what was to come, the pilots discussed en
route to Chicago what could happen if the plane failed to stop in
time.
"No procedure if that
sucker fails when you touch down?" Oliver asks Sutherland, speaking
of the plane's automatic braking system, which the pilots were to
use for the first time. "We just go through the fence? We never
talk about any of that stuff, ya know?"
Sadly, we all know how Flight 1248 ended... with a Boeing 737
skidding down a snow-slicked runway, heading for a blast fence...
and a busy roadway.
"Come on, baby. ... Son of a [expletive]," the captain blurted
out, according to the transcript of the CVR released Tuesday, and
reported by the Chicago Tribune.
"Jump on the brakes, are ya?" First Officer Steven Oliver yelled
back.
And, in the most poignant statement on the CVR... "Oh, no, a
car."
Sutherland shouted that moments before the 737-700 overran the
end of the runway... and struck the car that six-year-old Joshua
Woods was riding in. Woods was killed in the accident.
The NTSB is expected to take the information gathered in this
week's hearing, and use it to determine the probable cause of the
accident.
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