A Southwest Airlines (WN) Boeing 737-700, registration N799SW, operating as Flight 1919 inbound from Denver International Airport (DEN) overran Runway 19C at Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW) after landing on Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 1:33 p.m. CDT and stopped in a grassy apron area next to an airport perimeter barrier just 150 feet from a busy road, according to reports by CNN, Daily Markets, Transport Workers Union 566, New York CIty Aviation, the Daily Mail, and a Southwest Airlines Blog, published on Tuesday, April 26, 2011.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident, which is called a runway excursion, the aircraft carried 134 passengers, five lap children, and five crew members. Initial reports are that no one was injured on the nearly full flight, which can hold as many as 137 passengers.
The airline has reached out to all of the passengers on the flight, provided them with a full refund of their purchased tickets, and offered them vouchers for two free future flights on Southwest.
Runway 13C is 6,522 feet in length, the longest of 5 runways at MDW, and among two that are surfaced in concrete, as shown in the attached video clip and slide show which accompany this article.
Some rain was falling at the time of the incident, which was the second runway overrun at this airport by Southwest.
Reporting on findings by the NTSB, Case Number PB2007-910407, on December 8, 2005, at 7:14 p.m. CST, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-7H4, N471WN, operating as Flight 1248, ran off the departure end of Runway 31C, rolled through a blast fence, an airport perimeter fence, and onto an adjacent roadway, where it struck an automobile before coming to a stop.
According to the NTSB, "A child in the automobile was killed, one automobile occupant received serious injuries, and three other automobile occupants received minor injuries. Eighteen of the 103 airplane occupants, which included 8 passengers, 3 flight attendants, and 2 pilots, received minor injuries.The airplane itself was substantially damaged."
In the previous incident, the NTSB determined four contributing factors, as follows:
01 - Failure by Southwest to provide its pilots with clear and consistent guidance and training regarding company policies and procedures related to arrival landing distance calculations.
02 - Programming and design of the aircraft's on board performance computer, which did not present inherent assumptions in the program critical to pilot decision-making.
03 - A Plan to implement a new autobrake procedures without a familiarization period.
04 - A failure to include a margin of safety in the arrival assessment to account for operational uncertainties.
The NTSB determined that the probable cause of the 2005 accident was the pilots failure to use available reverse thrust in a timely manner to safely slow or stop the airplane after landing, which resulted in a runway overrun.
In the current incident, NTSB Senior Investigator Bill English will serve as the Investigator-In-Charge. Parties to the investigation include the Federal Aviation Administration, Southwest Airlines, Boeing and the Southwest Airlines Pilot Association.
Southwest Airlines has experienced a cluster of recent flight incidents, including the fuselage rupture of Flight 812 on April 1, 2011, which the NTSB is continuing to investigate. The carrier was also involved with a near miss of Flight 821, another Southwest Boeing 737-700, with a Cirrus SR22 single engine private aircraft near Orlando, FL on March 27, 2011, after an FAA flight controller asked the pilots of that aircraft to visually check on the SR-22, which had been out of radio contact.
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