Pilot Error Is Focus of Probe Into Jet’s Skid

Investigators Monday focused on the possibility of pilot error as a battered Southwest Airlines jetliner was dragged back onto Burbank airport property 14 hours after it skidded off a runway and onto a busy street.

Officials said the Boeing 737 may have landed too fast after a delayed but routine flight from Las Vegas. Another possibility, they said, is that the plane landed “too long”--not touching down until near the midpoint of the 6,032-foot runway.

Although its brakes and thrust reversers appear to have functioned properly, there apparently wasn’t enough of Runway 8 left to stop the 108,000-pound plane in time. It hurtled past the terminal, crashed through a metal “blast fence” barrier at the end of the runway, grazed a car on Hollywood Way and stopped just short of a service station.

Four of the 142 passengers and crew members were hospitalized with minor injuries, but all had been released by Monday afternoon. The most seriously injured was the pilot, who suffered scalp cuts.

Passengers said that as Flight 1455 neared Burbank about 6 p.m., the cockpit crew warned them via the intercom that the final approach might be “a bit bumpy” because of gusty winds.

Several of the passengers said the descent to the airport seemed unusually steep, and the landing seemed faster, harder and, to some, farther down the runway than usual.

“That runway is plenty long enough for a 737, if you touch down at the proper speed and in the touchdown zone--the first 1,000 feet of the runway,” said Barry Schiff, a retired TWA captain and air safety consultant.

“If you’re too fast, or it looks like you’re going to touch down too late, you should abort the landing and do a go-around.”

Schiff, the airline and the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the accident, all stressed that it is too early to determine what went wrong. However, sources close to the investigation said that at least for now, pilot error is considered the most likely cause of the accident.

Southwest Chief Executive Herb Kelleher said the crew did not report any mechanical problems before the accident. And although a gusty storm had swept through the area a few hours earlier, other jets had landed on the runway moments before the accident, and none reported problems with the weather.

Jeffrey R. Rich, the NTSB investigator heading a 40-person team charged with determining the cause of the mishap, said meteorological conditions were “rather benign” as Flight 1455 approached the airport. He said there was “a bit of a tail wind,” about 7 mph, but officials said that should not have been enough to cause a problem. Visibility was about nine miles.

‘Like We Were a Jet Bomber’

But passenger Kevin McCoy said he knew there was something wrong as soon as the descent began.

“I felt like we were a jet bomber,” said the food service executive from La Canada Flintridge. “We were coming down so fast, so steep. I’ve never experienced an approach like that before. It was almost like a sudden dive.”

The plane seemed to land farther down the runway than usual, hitting hard and fast, McCoy said.

“We were really cruising,” he said.

He said the cockpit crew hit the brakes so hard that he had to dig his heels into the carpet to keep from falling forward. The plane hit the barrier in a pivoting turn to the right that flung McCoy against the side of the plane.

The jetliner burst through the barrier in “a swirl of metal,” McCoy said.

Overhead luggage bins popped open. Oxygen masks dropped. Some passengers were gasping, others screaming. Then, suddenly, the plane stopped.

“It was like a big hand grabbed us and said, ‘Wait,’ ” McCoy said.

‘I Thought This Could Be It’

Passengers scrambled out of their seats, some reaching for their luggage. McCoy said it took three megaphone announcements by flight attendants to convince the passengers to drop their laptop computers and other bags and head directly for the inflatable chutes at the exit doors.

Shuttle driver Vartan Edzhuryan was sitting in his van in a parking lot on Hollywood Way when he saw the jetliner smash through the barrier in a shower of sparks and fractured metal. For one horrifying moment, he thought the jetliner was going to strike the service station, igniting its huge, underground gasoline storage tanks.

“It was coming exactly toward us,” he said. “I thought this could be it. If it blows we would all die together.”

He and another shuttle driver said they ran to the plane and started helping people off.

“Some were crying and people were yelling for their children and their husbands or relatives,” Edzhuryan said.

Carlos Martinez, a high school senior, was working behind the cash register at the gas station when his body shuddered from the jet’s roar. His alertness served him well. As the plane broke through the fence, he hit the emergency switch to the gas pumps and shut off the gas flow. Then he called 911.

“There were pieces of fence spinning in the propellers and the plane was coming right into the mini-mart,” he said.

Seeing fluid dripping from the wings, Martinez yelled for the passengers to run. Then he sprinted to the plastic slides and began to help them.

In a nearby parking structure, manager Eric Miranda had been talking to a co-worker when the plane careened across the street. He ran outside and saw a woman and little girl struggling to get out of a car under the plane.

As he ran to them, he could see the pilot in the cockpit.

“I noticed that the pilot’s head was leaning up against the window,” Miranda said. “It looked like he smashed the window with his forehead. It was bleeding.”

Miranda took the woman and her daughter to the parking structure, where they sat stone-faced for an hour and half.

“She was completely shocked, very quiet,” he said. “We were just talking about how she must have so many guardian angels on her side.

“She said she was on the left side of Burton [Avenue] going northbound when she saw the plane come through the fence. She made a right turn to avoid it, but she hit it right under the plane’s door.

Landing Gear, Nose Mangled

“She said it was a little scary and ironic that the door had a heart on it,” he said. “Their faces were completely white.”

The jetliner’s impact with the steel barrier shattered the radar dome that forms the plane’s nose, damaged the wings and buckled the front landing gear. Because of the mangled landing gear, cranes had to be brought in to haul the plane back onto the airport property Monday morning. The 737 was dragged to the far side of the airfield, where NTSB investigators will begin examining it today.

Victor Gill, a spokesman for the airport, said Runway 8 was reopened for landings--but not for takeoffs--at noon Monday. Landings generally use less of the runway than takeoffs.

The airport’s other runway, which is roughly at a right angle to 8, remained open for both landings and takeoffs, and Gill said there were no delays.

Investigators are studying the skid and impact marks on Hollywood Way. How long the thoroughfare will remain closed to traffic was not known.

The identities of the pilot and co-pilot have not been released, and it is not known which one was at the controls when the accident occurred.

Southwest said only that the pilot was “very experienced,” with about 18,000 hours of flight time, and that the co-pilot had been flying for about 15 years. Both men had been Air Force pilots before joining Southwest, the pilot in 1988 and the co-pilot in 1996.

The plane’s two “black boxes”--the cockpit voice recorder, which picks up all conversation and other sounds in the cockpit during the last 30 minutes of flight, and the flight data recorder, which logs the plane’s performance, control settings and instrument readings for the last several hours--will be flown to Washington for analysis by the NTSB.