as an old pilot I don't do visual approaches at night with the autopilot off instead I'll take the visual approach backed up by the ILS with the autopilot on to avoid situations like what apparently happened to southwest's flight 4069 the other night in Oklahoma City let's check it out as a Boeing Tri 7 Long Haul pilot we know a thing or two about fatigue and we want to use the automation as much as possible to help us avoid making mistakes that can crop up quite easily if we attempt a visual approach with the autopilot off starting first with Simon ri's Aviation Herald a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-800 this is not a Max aircraft registration 8555 Zulu performing flight AS Southwest flight 4069 departed June 18th from Las Vegas Nevada to Oklahoma City was on Final Approach to Oklahom Runway 13 just past midnight when the aircraft descended to about 1, 725 ft MSL which put him about 525 ft above the ground AGL at about 7.9 miles before the runway threshold and that was right about midnight the approach controller told the crew low altitude alert and queried you good out there the crew initiated climb to 3,000 ft MSL the controller canceled the approach clearance and instructed the crew to go around subsequently provided vectors for an approach to Runway 17 right where the aircraft landed without further incident about 10 minutes later the FAA reported after an automated warning sounded ah the automation inside the air traffic control tower has helped with this as well an air traffic controller alerted the crew of Southwest Airlines flight 4069 that the aircraft had descended to a low altitude 9 miles away from the Will Rogers Airport EFA will investigate the airline reported that they are in contact with the FAA regarding the irregularities on this approach this is the third low altitude warning that's been in the news with Southwest Airlines in recent history we're still waiting for an NTSB preliminary report on the LaGuardia incident back on 23 March and we have the go round in Loui Hawaii that resulted in a altitude of just 400 ft above the ocean the Will Rogers Oklahoma City airport is located right here here is Runway 13 9 Mi short of Runway 13 puts the aircraft low over the community of Yukon at just 500 ft Runway 13 located right here 7,800 ft long the 17s left and right are both 9,800 ft long there is a nons rnav instrument approach to Runway 13 that has an MDA of 1,640 Ft which puts the uh aircraft at 361 ft above the ground right prior to the touchdown this low altitude alert occurred about 9 miles out from the end of the runway which would correspond roughly to this Waypoint wabbit where the aircraft should have been at 4,000 ft MSL the aircraft was actually at 8,700 to 18800 ft in other words 9 mil out the aircraft was basically already at minimums what would have been minimums for this GPS Arnav approach one of the problems with doing a visual approach without the backup of an instrument approach is it involves some mental gymnastics that you have to do in the middle of the night and that is for every 3 miles out you should be 1,000 ft above the ground so out here at wabbit at approximately 9 miles out you should be 3,000 fet above the ground plus the airport elevation puts you at a MSL altitude of about 4,000 ft that gives you the approximate 3 to1 Glide slope to make it in for a visual approach Victor over at vas Aviation already has this incident up on his YouTube channel like And subscribe to his channel and support him on patreon let's check it out 46 493 13 stay with you and so right away we know that they are doing just the straight visual approach they didn't say anything about the Arnav GPS approach into Runway 13 and the tone of their voice it sounds like typical late night fatigue very common 469 low altitude alert you good out there yeah we're going around 49 okay so who alerted them first did was it really the Tower with the automat was the Automation in the tower that alerted the controller who in turn alerted the crew that caused them to initiate the go around or was the crew themselves getting enough jip wiiz warnings in the cockpit to initi iate the go around themselves that that'll all come out in the investigation there's the location of the low altitude alert right there over the town of U Yukon right near the Waypoint wabbit on the gpsr naav overlay where they should have been at 4,000 ft they're now at 1,800 ft you want to go around and come back for 13 you going to continue with the approach yeah we'll come back ground through 1 okay 1 7 right yeah do that 469 maintain 3,000 and it'll be like a right uh 180 turn right heading of 360 maintain 3,000 for1 to the right all right right turn 360 Southwest 4 so they do the right hand turn back up to the north vectors around 469 turn right heading 0 right 17 right but again they elect to do just turn right one [Applause] M they instead elect to just do the straight visual approach I don't hear them accepting the vectors for the ILS approach hopefully they're backing up this visual approach to 17 right with the ILS which is available on 17 right 88 469 turn heading 145 all right 145 469 469 turn right heading 16 Fields 1:00 n miles uh 160 46 we got still side 49 apprach right clear to land clear right clear for the visual and they land uneventfully on 17 right another advantage of using the is s to back you up on your visual approaches you've got two parallel runways you make sure that you're landing on the correct parallel Runway 17 right looking at the approach path coming in over Yukon it appears to me that the autopilot is off during this section of the approach up to the point to where they got the low altitude alert right around in here if we download the KML data and drop it into Google Earth we can take a look at the low altitude alert occurred right down in here here and come down in a more oblique view we can see the low altitude portion right back in here right over the Yukon High School area so local residents definitely definitely woke them up last night and if we look at the track log here on flight aware we can see a nice controlled rate of descent oh about 7 to 800 ft per minute all the way down to about 1,725 ft MSL appro approximately based on the adsb data before initiating a controlled climb out missed Approach at about 8 or 900 feet per minute rate of climb so why did the pilots get so low well that'll come out in the investigation but it seems to me to be just simple pilot error they were not using using the GPS rnav approach instrument approach into Runway 13 they were simply flying it visually with the autopilot off could it have been an equipment error or a altimeter error I doubt it because this is such a gross error that um that's highly unlikely regarding the Southwest Airlines flight 2786 that got too low while on the missed approach out of laoui first off this made maj news because this did involve a 737 Max 8 aircraft but this incident was taken into the ASAP program the aviation the confidential Aviation safety program within Southwest Airlines it was reviewed by everybody and it was determined to be a crew induced problem it was not a problem with the aircraft a thing about ASAP the whole concept of ASAP as it was set up in agreement with the FAA and the NTSB and the Airlines and the unions and everybody else to an anonymous reporting program so the information that comes out of the ASAP program needs to remain within the company it does not need to be leaked out onto social media that undermines the whole effort of ASAP Pilots will be unwilling to take advantage of the ASAP program if there's a chance that all that data gets leaked out from this incident all I can tell you is this was a crew induced program a problem it was was not a problem with the autopilot and it was a handf flown missed approach and during the missed approach the crew simply got too low regarding the LaGuardia event low altitude event back on the 23rd of March we're waiting for an ntsp preliminary report on that and once the information comes out in the NTSB reports that is all public information and can be shared with everybody there's a lot of turnover in the industry right now we've got a lot of brand new pilots coming on board these major airlines at this time and I think we're seeing the results of this in a lot of these incidents thank you so much for your support of this channel especially the folks over on patreon that make this content possible see you here
