Pilot of plane that ran off runway:'My fault'
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The pilot of a Southwest Airlines jetliner that careened off the runway and crashed through a fence upon landing last year at a Burbank, California, airport blamed himself for the mishap, according to cockpit transcripts released Tuesday.
"My fault ... my fault," Capt. Howard Peterson said immediately after the plane came to a rest on a highway outside the airport, according to the transcripts.
Twelve seconds later, while flight attendants yelled instructions to passengers in the background, Peterson added, "Well, there goes my career."
There were no fatalities to the 137 passengers and five crew members aboard the Boeing 737. A National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the March 5, 2000, accident is continuing.
While the cause of the accident has not yet been determined, NTSB records show investigators are looking at the plane's landing speed, and at the possible impact of tail winds.
Southwest Airlines spokesman Ed Stewart said the airline "terminated" Peterson in July of 2000 after its own investigation into the incident.
Peterson, using a union grievance process, elected to retire in November.
"It's my understanding that he still retains the ability to fly but he's not working with us, obviously," Stewart said.
According to NTSB records, Southwest Airlines Flight 1455 was uneventful from when it took off from McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas until it approached Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport.
As it descended, the pilot disengaged the auto-pilot and applied an increasing amount of flaps to slow the plane down. Flaps -- extensions of the wings -- allow pilots to increase the descent without increasing air speed.
As the plane approached the runway, an alert sounded, warning the pilot of an unusual descent rate, the cockpit voice recorder transcript shows. The device repeatedly said "Sink rate ... (whoop, whoop) ... pull up."
"The captain reported that he heard the aural alert ... but he could not recall when the warning began," the NTSB report says. "When asked specifically whether he heard the aural warning, "whoop, whoop, pull up," he stated, 'No, I don't. I just don't know,'" the report says.
Peterson has 11,000 hours flying time, -- 8,000 hours of it in the Boeing 737, the NTSB said.
There was no immediate reply to a request for comment Tuesday from Peterson's attorney.