CHICAGO – A Boeing 737 airliner that skidded off a landing strip and onto a city street needed about 800 more feet of runway to come to a safe stop, federal investigators said Thursday.
The Southwest Airlines jet crushed a car, killing a 6-year-old boy, after it skidded off a 6,500-foot runway and crashed through a fence at Midway International Airport earlier this month.
A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board shows the airplane touched down with about 4,500 feet of runway remaining, but snow and other factors meant the plane needed about 5,300 feet of runway, according to a report released Thursday.
Jim Hall, a former NTSB chairman not involved in the investigation, said the pilots landed the plane too late.
“You can come to the conclusion that the plane landed long. It touched down too far down the runway,” he said.
The jet’s actual stopping distance was about 5,000 feet, the NTSB report said. A tail wind contributed to the accident, according to the report.
Midway, which is surrounded by dense neighborhoods, lacks the Federal Aviation Administration’s recommended 1,000-foot buffer zone at the end of its runways. Only 82 feet separated the end of the runway and the fence the aircraft crashed through.
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