Lax FAA oversight let Southwest Airlines put millions of passengers at risk | Hacker News Reader

Lax FAA oversight let Southwest Airlines put millions of passengers at risk

washingtonpost.com

51 pointsbookofjoe40 comments

Over a long period of time, Southwest had been involved in a number of crazy accidents on the west coast, especially

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1455

which skidded off the end of the runway and almost hit a gas station. It could have been a scene out of a Hollywood movie right in Burbank, CA.

They shut down the gas station and installed this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_...

funny enough the first person to use that was baseball player and steroid junkie Alex Rodriguez who had some trouble landing his private plane.

Note the high accident count w/ Southwest is largely because Southwest is a big airline and has so many flights. Southwest used to be a David but now it is just another Goliath.

That's an interesting accident, but you editorialized a bit too much, and there wasn't a Southwest policy that was the issue. Southwest has more accidents on the west coast because 1) they serve that area and 2) smaller, urban airports have shorter runways that are next to cities.

In 2018, another Southwest flight used that same EMAS after overrunning the runway yet again, if you can believe it.

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=219098

For what it’s worth, Burbank actually has a really short runway.

That's one reason why I said "West Coast"; Southern California has a number of airports with short runways, too few runways (San Diego) and highly crowded airspace combining professional pilots flying large planes and rich jerks flying smaller planes who like to argue with air traffic controllers.

See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Airport#Accidents_a...

lol "steroid junkie."

Somewhat off-topic but still HN-relevant I think: PEDs aren't magic (still requires an absolutely massive amount of work to realize the benefits) and while I have no numbers to back it up, I'd wager usage is prevalent in most professional competitions. For pros, it's not just a game. It's a livelihood and I can't exactly fault them for doing what it takes to reach the top. I'm certainly not surprised or judgemental when they do.

You are right about that.

Steroids are not "an easy way out", but rather a way for serious athletes to achieve superhuman performance.

Every so often there is some suggestion that a new generation of muscle-building drugs might work without exercise but I find it hard to believe because I'm sure the stimulation of using your muscle provides cues to the cells how to grow to be effective and that if you produced hypertrophy some other way you'd get different results.

I'm flying Southwest later this month. Being in the UK, I'm geoblocked from this article. Should I be worried?

>The report found that Southwest “operates its fleet of aircraft with frequent weight and balance errors.” Such incorrect information was “frequently” communicated to pilots, which can “greatly affect” a plane’s safety and performance, the report said.

>The report also found that Southwest “operates previously owned airplanes in unknown states of airworthiness.”

Take your conclusions.

But later in the article, it says:

“While weight and balance control is critical for the safety of flight operations, the issues at [Southwest] rarely involved a baggage miscount that significantly affected aircraft loading,” the FAA said in its response.

One fatality in 50 years. I sleep on every flight.

I go back to, it's not the quantity, it's the quality. How long does it take to fall 7 miles vs, say, a car collision?

You won't be conscious if you're falling 7 miles[1]. Most accidents are at takeoff and landing so at worst you'll fall between 1 and 4 miles while conscious but most likely on the lower end of that scale.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_useful_consciousness

How long does it to take to bleed out when you die in a car crash? How long does it take to burn to death when you are trapped in a fiery wreck?

The two main complaints are:

1. Inaccurate weight and balance calculations (seems to be passenger seating since its reported to not be baggage weight and balance).

2. 88 aircraft with non-conforming repairs, the airline has since replaced the repairs with conforming repairs.

I'm not surprised on the first issue, since Southwest has to perform the weight and balance checking in a matter of minutes between all the passengers getting on board and pushback, because of the open seating.

The FAA will be implementing more stringent oversight between now and September 30th.

> Southwest has to perform the weight and balance checking in a matter of minutes between all the passengers getting on board and pushback, because of the open seating.

Why wouldn't this be an issue for other airlines as well? United doesn't ask for a passenger's weight in advance to pre-calculate based on their assigned seat.

Passengers are (for the most part) considered equal for W&B calculations. It's about "Is this seat occupied?"

For most flights, it is fine, since most SW flights are full or close to it. It is for the flights that happen at off times to less popular destinations where you may have a half empty plane with most people toward the front, to one side (to see a view maybe), etc.

I’ve been on Southwest flights so sparsely full (maybe 40 people on a plane with capacity for 120) where the flight attendants have to repeatedly tell people to “spread out for weight and balance.” That’s about as scientific as their calculation got.

Which is drastically different from my experience from flying a different carrier with a very empty plane. The original seat assignments had all of the passengers bunched together and the flight attendants denied anyone's request to move to empty rows until the plane reached altitude. They finally explained that the plane's load master stated that's where the weight needed to be during take-off/landing. Once they explained that, everyone complied without any further complaints.

I wonder if everyone moved back to their assigned seats before landing. Did they?

Yes, when they made the announcement about making the descent on approach, they asked everyone to move back to the seats they were in on take off while return your tray and seat to their upright position

CG CP - Center of Gravity, Center of Pressure.

I just took a nearly empty southwest flight last week. The flight attendant asked me to move further back in the plane, and appeared to have an iPad or notepad she was using to track passenger count per zone. First time I’ve seen this system.

Southwest uniquely allows passengers to board the plane as they please. Random boarding is mathematically the faster way to board (where other airlines choose the slowest options to drive priority boarding upsales), but has this side effect.

When an airline does need the passenger's weight, they don't ask. They measure, and oblige the hand baggage.

It's common in the Pacific, as there are many small islands connected by planes.

Thanks very much for the summary!

No. I don't like Southwest, but they're one of the absolute safest airlines in the country. The issues mentioned in the article could indicate they're being increasingly non-responsive to the FAA, but, no. I wouldn't hesitate to fly them.

https://archive.md/SNyR4

Mile for mile, it's still significantly safer than driving the same distance.

Trip for trip, it isn't. Taking a few long distance trips in an airline is very safe, taking many short distance trips isn't.

https://archive.md/SNyR4

Yet, despite various issues over many decades, the airline has zero fatal events where a fatal event is defined as a death of a passenger or crew member as a result of some sort of accident.

I'm confused by this comment. What about https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43803340 ?

That's recent enough that it's very possible the poster you are replying to didn't know about it, or just forgot. But certainly up until 2018, it was a well known bit of "received knowledge" that Southwest had never had a passenger fatality. Until the incident mentioned above, the only fatality they'd been involved with had been when a plane skidded off an icy runway (at Midway, I think) and hit a car sitting a stoplight, and killed a passenger in the car.

In any case, in terms of actual outcomes, Southwest has had a pretty good track record over the lifetime of their airline.

I was going by AirSafe reporting 0.00 for their FLE. However, due to the size of SouthWest, a single fatality throughout the history of the company probably does not change this number from zero.

http://www.airsafe.com/airline.htm

However, they may not have updated their site beyond the incident summary because Southwest is still listed as an airline with zero passenger fatalities.

http://www.airsafe.com/airline.htm

Weirdly, that page is listed as updated in 2019. Someone must have missed the SW one.

The Southwest page does mention the 2018 incident and fatality, and was updated the day of the incident in fact. However, the incident isn't "numbered" as a fatal event--instead it has a UL bullet instead of an OL number, which looks like a mistake.

On one hand, AFAIK the event wasn't SW's fault at all--they'd performed maintenance on the engine to standards. The fan blades failed due to a material fatigue issue, and happened to hit the engine cowl at its weakest spot and detached it.

But I thought Airsafe still would've counted that as related to the operation of the plane, though, and the FLE for that flight would be like 0.007 (1/143) and still round up to 0.01. Since only flights with a fatality at all count for their calculation that'd be an overall FLE of the same.

Yeah, I would think that it would still "count against" SW in that regard, even though it wasn't a "plane crash" or whatever.

That site also uses the word "crash". The Southwest flight in question didn't crash, per se... it landed at an airport. So if they mean crash to really mean "incident", then their site would be wrong. If they meant something closer to "fell out of the sky"... well... they'd maybe be right, but misleading. Crash or incident, that person certainly had a bad day and probably didn't care much about how that was categorized.

Ah yes, the "make me" culture. As in, make me do it or get the fuck out. It's as prevalent in corporate America as it is in our government. The problem is, there is no one there to enforce the laws and regulations. Corporations should be subject to the government and the government subject to its own command structure and hierarchy. They are not. The result? The government has given up its monopoly on power. Now you can die in a plane and nothing will happen to your murderer (see 737 max). Now you can commit crimes as a government employee without fear of punishment or retaliation. No one is safe. Without consequences for bad actions, we might as well still be out in the jungle, fearing for our lives daily. In fact, this is the reality for tens of millions of Americans. Money can buy some protections, but most are out of reach of ordinary citizens. I mean who can force Southeast to comply with standards if the FAA and the entire government structure behind it going up to the president can't do it? I think it's safe to say we do not and likely never did live in a country that's ruled by law.

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