It was luck that the max effort breaking was enough to stop them.

Rubbish.

No luck involved. The lenth of the runway is what gave them room to stop.

Lucky it was long enough. :O

Exactly! They had no idea how long the runway was! They were lucky it was longer enough to stop with max manual braking.... Why can people not understand the obvious... How ancient are you Geek!?

The runway was long enough to land a 737 without any problems or indeed without maximum braking. It was long enough to take off again later, albeit not heavily loaded because a failure at V1 would have been interesting.

If it was too short they would have almost certainly have noticed and not landed. Every pilot comes with a pair of Mk1 eyeballs.

There is absolutely no excuse for invoking luck, gods, devine intervention, good karma or any other such superstious flimflam. Superstition has no place at the pointy end of an aircraft.

Clearly very ancient! I think you must be the only one on here that thinks the airport was suitable for that aircraft! There is no valid landing performance data for landing a 73 there! Landing without any problems is not using max manual breaking! No one here is suggesting that the runway was NOT too short - are you seriously telling me that you believe their MK 1 eye ball told them at night, "yeah its a bit on the short side but I can tell by looking at it that if we stand on the brakes we will be fine"!! Any pilot realizing they were landing at the wrong field at any point up to unstowing the reversers would be going around! :ugh: Besides, the pilots have admitted not realising they had the wrong field until after touchdown ... so yes they were lucky!

I will agree with you on one point - that there is no place for luck at the pointy end but in this case there apparently was, and that luck was the difference between life and death.

There is no valid landing performance data for landing a 73 there!

Mr. Boeing disagrees with that statement. He does have in his library the Planning and Performance Manual for those who chooses not to use the airline specific ROTWs or Airport Specific Landing Data Pages.

There's no luck involved in anything. They had the length to land on or they would have gone off the end. They didn't go off the end, ergo they had sufficient runway to land.
Had they landed at the correct airport, then it would be luck they didn't go off the side, didn't have a fire, etc.

If you're going to include luck in the equation, then you need to factor in devine intervention as well.

It was certainly more "good luck" than "good judgement".

While it's true that the runway didn't supernaturally grow to accommodate them, their state of knowledge about the distance to the end of it was a divine mystery at the point they decided to land there. The fates' scissors stayed open this time. The piece of good judgement was in choosing to stop with all urgency once that mystery become apparent.

Careening off the side, or catching fire would have been as likely anywhere - that would have been very very bad luck indeed.

Call it what you like, fate, serendipity, who cares, but history shows us that very often the reason why the last few holes in the cheese did or didn't line up on a particular day is purely down to chance.

If AF4590 hadn't rolled over that 17" titanium strip on the CDG runway ...

If there hadn't been construction vehicles on that closed runway ...

etc

etc

Granted, you can't and shouldn't count on luck being on your side, but there are plenty of aviators still alive today because it was when they needed it even though they hadn't factored it into their pre-flight planning. :O

Lucky odds or chances are...
 

You guys need a course in semantics. Or maybe a dictionary. Luck means leaving the outcome to chance, in a situation in which one relinquishes all control over the outcome and - this is the misunderstood part- the determinants of outcomes. At the moment the main landing gear touched the concrete, there either was, or was not, sufficient linear distance til they went into the drink. That distance is inherently calculable, knowing all the pertinent variables. Duh stupid name call-out call-out, as it occurred, there was enough length to stop with Max braking. Really, I am shocked that you-all are trying to say "they were very fortunate" but it comes out as if it were best understood as a game of chance. They were fortunate it turned out the way it did, but it wasn't luck. What it is!! What it is, is the set of mechanical dynamics and plain old physics, and I'm guessing, their adherence to a myriad of proper aviating tasks such that their touchdown point was located close enough to the runway threshold on the approach side.

You prove my point for me...there was either enough linear distance to stop or not .. the question "is there enough distance?" was not considered at any point by the crew, it was therefore pure luck, chance, coincedence (whatever semantics you want to use) that there was enough distance. If they had indeed gone off the end no doubt people would be saying they were "unlucky" .

Check the dictionary again lucky=fortunate!

Really!? It has come to this sophomoric exchange between professionals? There are days I wonder why I still visit this forum. Can't we all just get along?

Pile it on, kiddies. If I've learned anything on this forum, its donning a thick skin. Feeling fortunate that I don't live in this neighborhood. Yeah, feeling lucky...:8

I haven't seen any discussion about how well this crew must have done in landing promptly on the approach end of the runway. If I recall correctly, Southwest is using HUDs in their aircraft. It would seem logical that this helped reduce the touchdown dispersion and contributed to the success of the landing.

Once they determined to land on that particular strip, they were fortunate that the runway was not 500 feet shorter, but then again, if it was, they may have recognized their mistake.

If I had not flown into a particular airport at night before, I think I would have absolutely confirmed the proper airport using appropriate navigation. There are too many of those darn things out there to just assume you have the right one in focus. This has to be mental complacency. Just the thing that SOPs are designed to prevent.

Fate is the hunter, waiting for such omissions to strike. You have all sorts of bells and whistles to make things safer, but if you fail to use them properly, you are back in that type of aviation that Ernest Gann wrote about where it all rides on the skill and determination of the guys flying. This time the hunter was denied its prey but the opportunity was there.

Hit the "Like" button on the above post:ok:

Machinbird - be careful using the word "fortunate" .. you will have people saying they were lucky next. Which is obviously an entirely different thing! :ugh:

regarding the HUD (heads up display).

I can't speak for southwest airlines. But with our HUD equipped planes the HUD is only used for CATll/CATlll ILS approaches.

I think everyone is overthinking everything about this mistake.

IF the runways in question had an ILS approach, this may not have happened.

Though, as I mentioned, older planes with older radios may have seen the back course displayed if the front course ILS had been set for Branson airport.

IF I sent everyone here to Times Square in New York with the assignment to find the following as quickly as possible, there would be mistakes made.

GO Find a Tall Blonde Woman wearing a blue dress, and her name is anna.

I'll bet someone would find the same with the name paula.

And don't ever overlook the effect of having a third person in the cockpit, someone who IS NOT a pilot. Pluses and Minuses to be sure.

Situational awareness went out the outflow valve on this one. They were way off the mark on all accounts.


Ranging from airport elevation to airport layout, clearly illustrated on the Jeppys and NOAs.

Chairman Hersman of the NTSB stated today that non-pertinent conversations with the jumpseater may have played a role in the approach and landing. This isn't gonna be good, you can take that to the bank.

glendalegoon said;
The SWA HGS has flight path vector information, which will show where you will touch down at the input gpa.

So your HUD won't show this? The SWA HGS also warns of an impending tailstrike, and offers windshear avoidance and TCAS RA information. It can be used for low vis takeoffs, or regular takeoffs.

It seems odd that yours is only used for lower than CATI approaches.