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Accident Analysis : Southwest Airlines

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Accident analysis: Southwest 1248

Majed Alwehaibi
Middle Tennessee State University

Professor Wendy Beckman
March 1, 2015

The 8th of December 2005 was a hard day for Southwest Airlines (SWA) but was catastrophic for the family that lost a child and for the aviation industry. At that day, SWA flight number 1248 overran the departure end of the runway number 31C during landing at Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW), Chicago, Illinois. The Boing 737 broke through two fences then onto a roadway. The plane came to a stop after hitting some cars. A kid was killed and the passengers of the cars and the airplane received some serious and minor injuries. The plane left Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), Baltimore, Maryland about 6 p.m. after two hours delay due to the bad weather conditions at Chicago. That accident happened for the first flight of a long scheduled three-day trip. The pilot was in charge of flying while the co-pilot was in charge of monitoring. Before taking off, they received the latest weather updates for MDW, which indicates that the active runway for them would be 31C with mixed braking conditions. About 30 minutes before landing, the co-pilot entered the runway conditions, weather conditions and winds information into the OPC to figure out the needed distance for landing. Due to the mix conditions the co-pilot suggested two more scenarios of fair and poor braking. The pilot and the co-pilot also

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