Crashed Jet Surrounded by Homes, Questions

Tucked in the middle of a southwest Chicago neighborhood, Midway International Airport is surrounded by brick bungalows and family-owned businesses such as Darla’s Dance Center. Holiday lights are sprinkled across the rooftops, and elaborate manger scenes grace neatly trimmed lawns.

Friday morning, amid the snow-covered porches and life-sized baby Jesus dolls, sat the airplane.

As aviation experts began examining the listing hull of the Boeing 737-700 that slid off the end of a runway during a snowstorm Thursday night and crashed into two cars, federal officials said it could take up to a year to complete their investigation.

The crash of Southwest Airlines Flight 1248 killed Joshua Woods, 6, and injured his parents and two siblings. The Woods family had been on their way to visit the children’s grandparents when they stopped at a red light on Central Avenue, at the northwest corner of the airport, attorney Ronald Stearney Jr. said.

“Joshua and the other kids were looking out the windows, watching the planes,” Stearney said. “They could hear a loud roaring; they thought it was a plane taking off, but it kept getting louder and louder. The noise was deafening at the impact.”

Six other people -- four on the ground and two in the airplane -- suffered injuries that ranged from serious to minor, according to Southwest officials and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Curious neighbors gathered at the crash site Friday afternoon, braving biting winds and freezing temperatures to peer past police barricades and catch a glimpse of the snow-covered orange and blue jet.

“Everyone knows everybody here,” said Autumn Aumann, 21, a dance instructor at Darla’s who has lived in the neighborhood all of her life. “At first, everyone was wondering who was hurt. All last night and today, we were asking, ‘Do you know who it was?’

“When you find out it’s not one of your family members, you feel guilty for breathing a sigh of relief. Because the very next feeling is being horrified for that poor family.”

The accident happened as a snowstorm swept through the Midwest. Plows at the airport worked to keep up as an inch of snow fell each hour, said Patrick J. Harney, acting commissioner of the Chicago Department of Aviation.

Before being cleared for landing on the airport’s 6,500-foot center runway, the flight from Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, circled above Midway for about half an hour, Southwest Chief Executive Gary C. Kelly told reporters. The weather and flight traffic caused the delay.

The Woods family, meanwhile, had dropped by a McDonald’s, Stearney said. As they drove past the airport, Joshua was eating and singing along to Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

The air was so thick with swirling snow that motorists could barely make out the streetlights.

When the plane touched down at 7:14 p.m., there was an estimated seven inches of snow on the ground across the city. On the runway, there was one-sixteenth of an inch, Harney said.

Investigators are trying to establish exactly where the plane landed on Runway 31 Center, said Ellen Engleman Conners, the NTSB board member in charge of the investigation.

But instead of stopping on the runway, the jet -- which had passed a routine brake inspection Wednesday -- slammed through a soundproofing fence, which was designed to break apart on impact. It then crossed the sidewalk and crashed into two cars with a deafening screech of grinding metal.

Inside the Woods’ vehicle, the air bags inflated. Joshua’s father looked out the window at the turbine engine feet away.

He crawled out the window and pulled one of the children to safety. His wife and two other children remained pinned inside.

When city emergency crews arrived, they found the plane’s fuselage across the crumpled car. Joshua was the most difficult to reach, fire officials said.

“The father would not leave for the hospital until he knew Joshua was out,” Stearney said. “The police had to hold him back. He saw them bring [Joshua] out, pull a sheet over him. The police were still telling him: ‘They’ll work on him.’

“But he knew.... The family is overwhelmed with grief.”

The Woods family lives in Leroy, Ind., a rural community about 20 miles southeast of Gary. Joshua, a blue-eyed blond, was a kindergartner at Winfield Elementary School in nearby Crown Point, Ind.

“He was a shy little kid, but very popular with his peers,” said Milan Damjanovic, head of security for Crown Point School District.

Word of the crash spread quickly through the neighborhood surrounding Midway, where airline employees drawn by the appeal of walking to work live among families who have called this area home for decades.

To residents, the growl of jet engines overhead and the smell of fuel is part of life -- the price of convenience.

“Where else can you live where you walk a couple blocks and be able to go anywhere in the world?” asked Barney Brne, 54, a Chicago firefighter who has lived across the street from Midway since 1974. “You don’t have to worry about parking, and it’s easy for people to come visit. You can walk home from the baggage claim.”

About 10 miles southwest of downtown Chicago, Midway is the smaller of the city’s two major airports.

Built in the 1920s and renamed in honor of the World War II battle, Midway at one time was considered to be the nation’s busiest airport. And the city grew around the edges of what was once an empty field.

But after Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport opened, air traffic waned at Midway. Commercial airlines stopped using the airport in the early 1960s.

“I remember a time when my kids would go out there and roller skate in the terminal,” said Don Greenhill, 77, a retired carpet installer who lives across the street from the airport. “It was like a big park or playground.”

A modernization project drew commercial traffic back to Midway in the late ‘60s.

Thursday’s accident came 33 years to the day after another Midway airport tragedy.

United Air Lines Flight 553, en route from Washington to Omaha, had a scheduled stop at Midway. But as it approached the airport, the plane hit tree branches. Unable to abort its landing, it grazed the roofs of several buildings and crashed into the home of Veronica Kuculich.

She and her daughter Teresa were killed. Forty-three passengers aboard the plane, including U.S. Rep. George Collins of Illinois, died.

After investigating for more than a year, the NTSB attributed the crash to pilot error.

On Friday, Jose Ramirez Jr., 20, a college student who lives next to Midway, said: “We don’t consider this to be a dangerous place .... I don’t think it’s strange to see the entire tarmac from my bedroom window. It’s just home.”

Huffstutter reported from Chicago and Marshall from Seattle.