Incident: Southwest B38M at Tampa on Jul 14th 2024, descended below minimum safe height on approach

[IFG]

 

22 hours ago, UpperDeck said:

All of these knowledgeable pilots on AEF and yet no commentary about the SW approach to Tampa 4/5 miles out at 150'!!

Apparently, ATC saved the day suggesting a review of the altimeter setting?

Informative to read opinions as to how two pilots failed to observe the proximity to water!!

21 hours ago, conehead said:

I was wondering what the pilots were thinking while the GPWS was screaming at them "TOO LOW, TERRAIN! WHOOP WHOOP, PULL UP!"

2 hours ago, UpperDeck said:

But if the altimeter wasn't properly set, there wouldn't be any alarm, would there?

And if the alarm was; "Shark! Shark!"?

Starting new thread, as the other SWA thread (last 3 posts above) had meandered quite a bit. 

AvHerald - Southwest B38M at TPA, Jul 14th 2024, descended below minimum safe height on approach

Three of these in four months - LGA, OKC & TPA. They're not all quite as close as this one, but hard not to wonder if SWA itself is not systemically a common link in these incident chains. The final report will of course supersede any speculating in the peanut gallery.

Meantime, some curiosities.

Any tower guys in the cab at PIE must have wondered about a 737 descending through 1000 feet about four miles north of them?

Weather was over 10 nm visibility &4000 feet. TPA was in sight? or maybe just should have been (down at a few hundred AGL, miles of vis more than a couple or three is about as useful as teets on a bull).

Not sure where the 150 ft agl number is from, but the readout in the item above is pressure altitude (FL002 at its lowest), which pressure corrects to about 400 feet. Still pretty damn low, but that's 100% better? 

If the aircraft was in landing configuration (& who knows yet), there is no GPWS call-out, the system is configured for a planned CFIT, aka landing .

We'll see eventually what went down; sometimes these things, that do look recto-cranial at first glance, do uncover canary-in-the-coal-mine tripwires.

Cheers, IFG - 

[Turbofan]

There is simply not enough info on the avherald site to even speculate.  The explanation could be as simple as doing a visual to the wrong piece of pavement.  Ie the causeway.

The Avherald statement of events also appears to contradict itself.  It says 50 seconds later a go around was initiated.  Yet the map depiction shows a decent, albeit to the wrong place, and then an immediate go around. 50 seconds at 140kts is about 2NM. 

 

But to answer a few questions.

They never descended below 370 feet.  400 feet is a pretty common minimum descent altitude for an approach.

GPWS works off of radio altimeter and is completely independent of pressure altitude.  It starts working at 2500 feet. GPWS won’t scream at you in landing configuration except for things like sink rate.  It thinks your landing.

Enhanced EGPWS has a worldwide terrain and airport data base in it. It provides look forward terrain clearance as well as a terrain clearance floor.  TCF. It will scream at you if you approach to an area without a known runway in the data base.  TCF triggers around the 400 foot mark.

 

 

[conehead]

43 minutes ago, Turbofan said:

Enhanced EGPWS has a worldwide terrain and airport data base in it. It provides look forward terrain clearance as well as a terrain clearance floor.  TCF. It will scream at you if you approach to an area without a known runway in the data base.  TCF triggers around the 400 foot mark.

Yes.. and for this reason I would think the alarms would have been triggered. Surely Southwest has EGPWS installed on all of their fleet..?

[Turbofan]

Yes that is correct although it can be MEL’d. 
 

It certainly looks as if the vertical path was targeting the causeway.  If they were flying a visual to the wrong piece of pavement in the rain I wouldn’t suggest this was any kind of near miss.  Very embarrassing but it’s not like they would have ever landed on it.

It looks like they caught the error, the EGPWS caught the error or ATC caught the error, possibly all three simultaneously and they went around.

But we are all going to have to wait for better info.  

[UpperDeck]

But my question was "Why?!!". This should not be happening. Don't seek explanations that conceal neglect. Be cynical and assume incompetence.

It was ATC that alerted the crew to an "issue". This was the third time in as many weeks? This crew apparently initiated a "go around" and then elected to divert to Fll.

I'm still awaiting discussion about the final disposition on the SFO near disaster!

[IFG]

11 hours ago, Turbofan said:

.... The Avherald statement of events also appears to contradict itself.  It says 50 seconds later a go around was initiated.  Yet the map depiction shows a decent, albeit to the wrong place, and then an immediate go around. 50 seconds at 140kts is about 2NM .... 

Turbofan - I think the 50 seconds starts around the (more or less) level off, rather than the lowpoint, roughly the FL004-2-4 stretch which looks a couple miles, and ATC would be seeing an altitude readout in 4-500 range? 

I'd wondered about a dive-and-drive approach. They're still outside the FAF at (more or less) minimums (chart below), which does leave the possibility they abandoned the approach profile (going for the causeway maybe)? They were already well below FAF-crossing altitude abeam PIE, though. If the line in the AvHerald image is a radar track, it sure looks coupled to the final approach & MAP track.

So the overall point that there's not enough info to draw anything substantive stands, of course.

UpperDeck - Don't think anybody is "seek[ing] explanations that conceal neglect".  To "assume incompetence" may leave a procedural tripwire, or maybe an equipment design issue, still dormant. When incompetence is exposed, which unfairly reflects on vast majority of the fully competent, the push is to trap the resulting errors, should that incompetence ever recur. 

Assuming incompetence might be a surrogate for assigning liability, and we've got lawyers for that 

 

Cheers, IFG - 

Edited July 29 by IFG

[UpperDeck]

LOL....lawyer's generally focus on liability when damages are incurred. Thankfully, none of these recent "incidents" resulted in injury.

I was focussed on responsibility. Turbofan noted the potential of mechanical failure and I acknowledge readily the possibility of consequence without fault. However, I think it not unreasonable to focus on probabilities, perhaps a more instructional perspective for the vast majority of "blameless pilots".

It was suggested elsewhere that Southwest has been engaged in rapid hiring of pilots without ensuring adequate training and monitoring and that "deviations from the norm" such as this occurrence are a result.

[J.O.]

Juan provides some good context here, but his opening statement kind of says it all.