Southwest Jets Dip To Low Altitudes, Adding To Airline Safety Concerns

ACROSS AMERICA — Federal regulators are tightening their oversight of Southwest Airlines after a series of troubling incidents in which its Boeing 737 aircraft dipped to dangerously low levels, buzzing a high school in one of close encounter and nearly plunging into open water in two others.

“Let’s not mince words here — that’s terrifying, and seconds from disaster,” Ben Schlappig wrote on his One Mile At A Time travel blog of a Southwest flight last month that rapidly plunged to a level of about 150 feet over the Courtney Campbell Causeway, a bridge over Tampa Bay.

“Worst of all, the pilots didn’t even seem to realize what was going on,” he wrote, citing Federal Aviation Administration ADS-B logs. “Instead, they only increased altitude again after an air traffic controller warned them about a low altitude alert.”

In another Southwest, a Boeing 737 Max jetliner, which had been parked outside during a storm, did an unusual “Dutch roll” — a name to describe the combination of a yawing motion when the tail slides the plane rocks from wingtip to wingtip — on a May 27 flight from Phoenix to Oakland, California. Another of the popular discount carrier’s jets took off from a closed runway in Maine last month.

The aircraft in all five incidents landed safely and passengers deplaned unscathed beyond frayed nerves. They add to heightened concerns about airline safety after a string of sensational incidents, including a Jan. 5 in-flight door plug blowout that left a gaping hole in a Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner at 16,000 feet and forced an emergency landing.

‘The Elephant In The Room’

Scott Powell, president of Skyline Corporate Communications Group, told The Street that Boeing, especially, is in the midst of a growing “crisis of trust.” Southwest’s fleet is made up entirely of Boeing aircraft.

Recent mishaps are reason for pause and air travelers should exercise some caution, Powell said, but the percentage of flights with incidents is “really not that high.”

“Obviously,” Powell said, “the incidents as a percentage of the number of flights that occur each day, each week, each month is still very small and it’s still the safest way to travel.

“But there are alarming incidents that have really scared travelers on these aircraft,” Powell told The Street. “Personally, I always look at the type of aircraft because I do fly a lot for business. And personally, I do look at the type of aircraft.”

Travelers want answers.

“Let’s talk about the elephant in the room,” a person posting as WorldTourist wrote on a forum on Southwest Airlines’ website regarding the string of mishaps related to larger issues at Boeing. “We want to know what [the airline] is doing to stop these things from happening. …”

The FAA said in a statement Tuesday that it is more closely scrutinizing Southwest “to ensure it is complying with federal safety guidelines.” The agency declined to provide specific details but said it continually adjusts its oversight based on risks.

“Safety will drive the timeline” of the investigation, the agency said.

Here’s a closer look at recent low-altitude incidents involving Southwest:

‘This Should Not Have Happened’

On July 14, a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet operated by Southwest lost more than 1,500 feet of altitude in just over a minute, coming within 150 feet of Tampa Bay while still about 5 miles from its intended landing in Tampa Bay, triggering a low-altitude alert. At that point in the approach, the plane should have been more than 1,000 feet above the surface, according to an FAA flight chart.

The pilot quickly responded after getting the low-altitude alert from an air traffic control operator. When the plane lost altitude, it was flying through stormy weather, with light rain and gusts of up to 20 mph. The flight, which originated in Columbus, Ohio, was rerouted from Tampa International Airport to Fort Lauderdale.

At such a low altitude, a wind shear — a sudden change in the speed or direction of the wind — could have “swatted the airplane like a fly into Tampa Bay,” Robert Katz, a veteran commercial pilot, told the Tampa Bay Times.

Katz said pilots should have been aware the plane was at a dangerously low altitude without the air traffic controller’s intervention.

“This should not have happened,” he told the news outlet. “These pilots are going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

‘It Sounded Like A Wall Of Wind’

In a similar incident on June 19, a Southwest jet dipped to 525 feet over Yukon, Oklahoma, sounding like a “wall of wind” as it passed over startled residents’ homes. The Boeing 737 jet out of Las Vegas was still 9 miles from Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers World Airport at the time.

Spencer Basoco lives close to the high school in Yukon, where the plane was at its lowest altitude, buzzing the high school at just a few hundred feet.

“I was kind of like halfway in between sleep, being awake, and I just hear this whoosh … And I thought at first, like a storm was blowing in … because it just sounded like a wall of wind,” he told news station KFOR. And I looked out the window where the sound was coming from … if you go a few blocks away is the high school. And I just see a plane.”

‘A Roller Coaster Maneuver’

On April 11, a Southwest aircraft dropped at “an abnormally high rate of more than 4,000 feet per minute” before pilots pulled up to avoid crashing into the Pacific Ocean, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the incident.

The interisland hop, which departed from Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, was bound for Lihue airport, just north of Honolulu. The flight crew performed a “roller coaster maneuver” to avoid plunging into the ocean, the outlet said. Once the correction was made, the flight turned around and returned to the originating airport.

Southwest’s $231M Boeing Problem

Southwest said it is working closely with the FAA and also has formed a team of people from the airline, its union and the FAA to strengthen its safety-management system.

The airline made sweeping operational changes after a first-quarter 2024 net loss of $231 million, which CEO Bob Jordan blamed on Boeing safety and production issues.

Other safety issues include April 7 incident in which an engine cowling fell off a Southwest-operated Boeing 737-800 and struck a wing flap during takeoff from Denver International Airport.

Two days earlier, a pilot abandoned takeoff at Texas Lubbock Preston Smith Airport after a flame shot out of one of the engines of the Boeing 737. And on March 22, a Southwest 737-800 flight returned to a Fort Lauderdale airport after one of its engines shut down at 4,000 feet.

The FAA’s action this week is among several moves by new Administrator Mike Whitaker to respond to airline safety concerns since the door plug incident year. The FAA took the rare step of grounding Boeing’s170 Max 9 aircraft for several weeks, delaying the certification of new models of the plane and conducting an audit that found the plane’s production process was plagued with issues.

Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace manufacturer, will defend new safety measures next month when the National Transportation Safety Board convenes 20 hours of investigative hearings over two days, Aug. 6-7, to determine how and why that happened.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.