The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating a Southwest Airlines flight that came within hundreds of feet of the ocean off a Hawaiian island in early April.
The Boeing 737 Max 8 came within 400 feet of the ocean before making an ascent and returning to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu.
The FAA confirmed the incident to The Epoch Times and said it’s investigating.
Poor weather conditions off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where Lihue Airport is located, prompted pilots to reject their landing attempt and return to Honolulu.
A June 7 memo that Southwest sent to pilots about the incident explained that the first officer “inadvertently pushed forward on the control column while following thrust lever movement commanded by the autothrottle.”
The plane then rapidly descended at thousands of feet per minute.
In the memo, Southwest said, “Safety data confirmed the crew received a ‘DON’T SINK’ oral warning followed by a ‘PULL UP’ oral warning.” However, the first officer later said the crew failed to hear the oral warnings.
The memo added that the pilots, during a post-debrief, described seeing the flight severity “through the animations [as] a significant, emotional event.” The crew tried several corrective actions, and Southwest is reviewing flight data and any trends within its procedures and performance.
“The event was addressed appropriately as we always strive for continuous improvement,” Southwest said in a statement.
Juan Browne, a Boeing 777 first officer pilot for a major U.S. airline company, told The Epoch Times that Lihue is a “sporty airport with crappy weather and bad winds and crosswinds.”
He said the crew encountered poor weather while approaching the airport and started to descend during their “go around” procedure before touching down. The crew rejected the landing and ascended before returning to Honolulu.
“That sounds like this is not an airplane problem, I don’t think. This is probably a pilot problem,” Mr. Browne said.
He explained that rough weather can be difficult for newer pilots.
“If you’re hand-flying go around, and you push the throttles up, and you’re in the weather, and the nose is going to come up, you’re going to experience a somatogravic illusion,” where the plane’s nose feels like it is picking up more than it actually is, Mr. Browne said.
“The natural human tendency is to push the nose down or forward so that that can result in a bit of a descent,” he added.
The Boeing 737 Max 8 has the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS) onboard, which was the probable cause of the fatal Max crashes in 2018 and 2019.
Because the 737 Max has newer, bigger engines installed closer to the nose of the jet, Boeing implemented MCAS to prevent midair stalls if the nose pitches too high upward during an ascent.
Before the flight control software was overhauled following the fatal Max crashes, it received input from a single angle-of-attack sensor, causing the software to apply unnecessary pitch to the nose if the sensor was damaged during flight.
However, even though the April 11 flight was also on a 737 Max 8, there isn’t enough data to suggest that the software affected the pilot’s efforts to prevent the rapid descent.
“I suspect it was the pilot’s input that lowered the nose and not the MCAS system,“ Mr. Browne said. ”We would really need to dive deep into the data recorder onboard the aircraft to determine that.”
