With a damaged Southwest 737 (Flt 1248) barely having been moved off the runway, the fight for the hearts and minds of potential litigants is already utilizing this nation's media... and not a moment too soon in today's aero-litigious climate.

A law firm claiming to be "nationally recognized as the first and most prominent aviation law firm in the nation," is one of the first to start positioning itself in the midst of the media frenzy that has surrounded the Thursday night crash of a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 that was attempting a landing in a night-time snowstorm when it failed to stop before the end of the runway, injuring nearly a dozen people and killing a six-year old boy in a car struck by the aircraft.

In an internationally distributed press release, the firm seeking to promote this viewpoint, Kreindler & Kreindler LLP, is claiming that there are "striking(ly)" similarities between this night-time IFR landing in a snowstorm and the March 5th, 2000, early evening spring VFR (10 mile viz, 48 degree OAT, 9500' OVC) landing at California's Burbank airport after the flight crew executed a (too) fast approach and went off the end of the runway. It will be the better part of a year before the NTSB will rule on the potential cause of this accident... but already, members of the legal system are drawing parallels and putting forth potential causes that trained crash investigators will not dare to refute or confirm for many months.

This confounds a number of us at ANN and we expect a few of our readers may be similarly troubled at the rush to judgment that we seem to be experiencing. This kind of legal activity seems pretty counter-productive and awfully premature at this point... but that's just our opinion.

The statement of the law firm putting forth this hypothesis and the charges therein is reproduced below in italics... ANN welcomes reader comments about this matter.

Kreindler & Kreindler LLP Press Statement

Fatal Landing of Southwest Airlines Flight at Midway Airport in Chicago Last Night is Similar to Previous Runway Overrun Accident Carrier Has Had

May Be Indicative of Carrier-Specific Problem, Says Nation's Leading Aviation Law Firm

The fatal landing of Southwest Airlines (SWA) Flight 1248 at Chicago's Midway Airport in a snowstorm last night is strikingly similar to at least one other runway overrun accident involving Southwest, and may be indicative of a carrier-wide operational problem, according to attorneys and pilots with the aviation law firm Kreindler & Kreindler LLP. The previous incident occurred at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, CA, on March 5, 2000, injuring several people on the ground.

"While the investigation is ongoing and the specific cause in the Midway accident is not yet determined, it was the direct responsibility of the Southwest flight crew to safely land the 737 aircraft or make the decision that a safe landing could not be accomplished," said Daniel O. Rose, a partner at Kreindler who is also a highly trained pilot. "The crew, as do all crews, had the option to either abort the approach or divert the plane and passengers safely to another airport. Does this suggest a pattern in SWA's flight operations?

"In the Burbank crash of a 737-300, injured parties successfully claimed that SWA fosters a culture of expediency, cost savings and an aggressive 'get the plane down' approach that, in combination, compromised passenger safety," said Mr. Rose, who was involved in the Burbank litigation. "In that incident, it was determined that the SWA flight crew failed to abort an unstable approach. The aircraft approached too high, too fast and too steep. The flight crew was warned by the onboard warning system, yet proceeded with a dangerously out of limits approach and failed to abort the landing when it was clear they were unable to stop on the runway."

Mr. Rose indicated that, as a cost-savings method, SWA had also decided to disconnect an automatic braking system, which would have stopped the aircraft on the runway in Burbank. As at Midway, the Burbank aircraft ran off the runway, broke through the airport barriers, 20 feet tall steel blast fences, and ran onto Hollywood Way, a busy multi-lane road, crashing into a car and injuring its occupants. Kreindler was the lead attorney in the case on behalf of the 20 families involved in the Burbank crash.

"No less important is the fact that an especially high level of caution is required whenever severe weather that could compromise a safe landing is obvious and when runway conditions deteriorate," said Marc S. Moller, an aviation attorney and partner at Kreindler & Kreindler. "Weather doesn't cause accidents; people do. The fact that other aircraft safely landed last night before Flight 1248 and that the runway condition was reported as 'fair' would seem to suggest that there was something different about this plane's approach and landing. The 737-700 involved in the Midway crash should have had the auto brake system installed and, if used, that should have stopped the aircraft, given a normal and stable approach by the flight crew. Yesterday's crash is not the first in bad weather that should never have happened."

Originating from Baltimore-Washington International Airport last night, the landing of SWA's Boeing 737 killed at least one child on the ground and seriously injured several others as the plane overran the runway and plowed onto Central just south of 55th Street adjacent to Midway Airport.

FMI: www.ntsb.gov, www.southwest.com, www.kreindler.com