United Flight Slides off Runway
 

From the sounds of it, a rough night.

Would the mods please freeze this thread before the comments begin?

3am and heading to a 2nd alternate...long night. Glad nobody was hurt.

That would be contrary to discussions of all past incidents on this forum. This isn’t CNN.

Certainly appears to have been a difficult night. Nights like that are why I cringe whenever I hear some moron (pilot or otherwise) make the ”it’s an easy job” comment.

Looks like GRB had recieved freezing rain prior to arrival. I wonder if the pilots were given incorrect runway conditions.

Why? Is there something that shouldn't be discussed?

A United Airlines Boeing 737-900, registration NXXXXX performing flight UA-XXX from Madison,WI to Minneapolis,MN (USA) with 180 passengers and 7 crew, diverted to Green Bay,WI due to weather and landed on Green Bay's Austin Straubel Airport's runway 06 at 03:16L (09:16Z), but overran the end of the runway by about 250 feet. There were no injuries. The crew radioed tower advising they had overrun the end of the runway due to poor braking action on runway 06, they thought they were okay, no injuries on board and the aircraft was okay, too. They just needed stairs so that passengers could disembark and needed to be towed back onto the runway.

The FAA reported the aircraft damaged an airport light.

The aircraft had already diverted to Madison,WI due to weather at Minneapolis while performing the scheduled flight UA-XXX from Houston Intercontinental,TX (USA) to Minneapolis.

Metars Green Bay:

KGRB 230924Z AUTO 15009KT 8SM -FZRA OVC007 01/M01 A3012 RMK AO2 FZRAB0854E0856B18 P0000 I1001 T00061011=
KGRB 230853Z AUTO 14009KT 5SM BR OVC008 00/M02 A3015 RMK AO2 UPB0757E0759FZRAE0757 SLP218 P0000 60002 I1001 I3003 T00001017 56039=

I imagine it was nuanced by fuel status.

Always evolves into armchair quarterbacking of a fellow pilot on an anonymous, public forum. I hope you're never on the receiving end.

It never serves a purpose. If you're about to say we can learn from it through discussion, stop. Wait for the final report so you can have all the facts.

Nobody got hurt. A painful learning event for the crew that the rest of us will benefit from...they will be back on the line in due time.

I disagree. Sometimes it sparks a discussion on a hypothetical similar event. It also helps the APC community when the Monday morning quarterbacks reveal themselves making it easier for the rest of us to ignore them.

A "hypothetical similar event" and you need this to reveal the Monday morning quarterbacks so you can ignore them?

I rest my case.

I don't feel the responder was eloquent enough in his discussion, but I sympathize with the sentiment.

The accident has already been reported in the press so the entire issue for us as pilots is that we lead the world in self-reflection. Doctors are studying our techniques because we are the best professionals on the planet in terms of self analyzing our mistakes.

Now, having said that I will add that any discussion that lacks facts is unimportant and worthless.

My immediate take away is that FAR 117 did not go far enough. Pilots should not be allowed to work a 16 hour day in bad weather. That is a discussion worth having, and I am glad the internet affords us a voice that is sometimes amplified.

I could unfortunately see it unfolding like this. Airbus departs hard surface on landing during a snow event. Captain has less than 300 hours in aircraft and was the PF. Thankfully no fatalities but the aircraft sustained substantial damage. Both Captain and FO are facing a long road of questions from investigators and the company while looking forward to other hurdles to return to the cockpit. One could imagine their state of mind after such an event.

But it's ok SUNVOX, your eloquent, factual voice will add to a conversation of I'd never do that or I would have done this. I hope you never find yourself in that position because one of the first things you'll initially be told is to keep your mouth shut. Why is that SUNVOX? Should we be piling on when these guys are told to be quiet?

This reminds me of rubber necks who always have to slow past an automobile accident.

This is all hypothetical right? ;)

My take away
>The 737 approach speeds are uncomfortable.
>Dispatchers plan from a comfy swivel chair.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Glad nobody was hurt.

God forbid there be discussion about current events.

But wait! Isn't this you, the one calling or no comments...commenting??

Has anyone "piled" on "these guys?" No.

Go take a valium. The sky isn't falling yet.

Discussion about current events or critiquing a fellow pilot on a public forum? The "piling on" would eventually occur. The critiques should be left for the investigators and instructors.

Am I commenting? Evidently you didn't read carefully because my event was fictitious and had nothing to do with what happened the other night.

As for the valium....

You're right. No one should even be thinking maybe if they had to go into GRB next week with a 150/9 wind and a potentially slippery runway, they might opt for the RNAV to 18 and some extra runway over the short runway, a direct cross and an ILS to 06. ;)

Just talking future ops or perhaps a different airport altogether. Maybe 18/36 was closed the other night, IDK. Just food for thought or discussion since that's kind of what this forum is for.

United
 

I think it becomes a matter of statistics. We have all been in these situations and have been lucky. If enough airplanes operate in adverse conditions something like this will eventually happen. Always glad to hear everyone is ok.

Ban alternates within 30 miles of a large body of water. Add a new alternate filing requirement for coastal destinations: if your destination is coastal, have a noncoastal alternate. I'm only half kidding.

Never been faced with island reserves? Nowhere else to land, and a two hour fuel reserve?

If we ban alternates within 30 miles of a large body of water...the pacific is out, isn't it?

You sure as hell are, in the very thread you demanded closed, mr. freedom-of-speech.

I would beg to differ. I know of a significant number of carriers that operate day in and day out on ice and snow contaminated runways with numbers of takeoffs and landings at least comparable that don't slide off the end. Not that it'll never happen, but but I do see significant differences in the steps these carriers take to ensure the exact situation in this thread does not happen, from planning to execution. Luck is not a strategy. Again, I concede that every once and a while something comes out from left field that no one could have ever foreseen or expected, but these days that is incredibly rare.

If that's the case, how is it that my 135 (rather large and standardized one BTW) has larger safety margins than those 121 carriers you mentioned above? We sure as * don't even dispatch to severe icing.

Your 135 outfit is as large as United Airlines? It's scheduled? There's a difference between an on-demand outfit and one that's as expansive as the largest operator in the world, with far more scheduled departures and arrivals in a day than your company will see in a year.

No, mishaps are NOT inevitable, but yes, they do happen.

There's an idiotic and overused saying in the light airplane world that there are those who have made gear up landings, and those who will...and yet virtually never do we find gear up landings in professional cockpits; particularly airline cockpits. Is it possible? Of course it is, but given the method of operation and training, both possibility and opportunity are vastly diminished. Standardization and regular training and checking make a difference by orders of magnitude.

Severe icing, by definition, is icing which exceeds the ice protection capabilities of the aircraft.

If you've never been in a situation in which your destination weather was not as predicted, you haven't flown for long. We plan, we calculate, we update, and yet, despite the advances in prediction, reporting, monitoring, and observation, the weather on arrival is still very much what you see is what you get. The flight ahead made it in, and you don't. You fly over the field and see it clearly, yet visibility on approach is below minimums. Previous flight had good braking, but it's gone downhill due to temperature change, freezing rain, etc.

Mishaps are not inevitable. That they exist doesn't contradict that. It simply means they continue to happen and that more can be done, on a case by case basis, on every flight operation, to work toward reduction.

It can happen to you, too.

You may have answered your own question?

I live in GRB. I don't know the specific information that the flight crew/dispatch was looking at. That being said, GRB is a relatively quiet Charlie airport. The last scheduled flight arrived at about 2315L the night before. The first scheduled departure isn't until like 5am. I'm not sure if there were any braking action reports between 2315 and the incident. Maybe when GRB got notification of the diversion, they had an ops guy go out and do a braking test. I don't know. All I do know is the rain/freezing rain that night was pretty heavy. I had to close my bedroom window for noise, I had a hard time getting my car started the next day (probably because of water in the line), and I could have went ice skating on my apartment's parking lot. The actual conditions obviously deteriorated from whatever the last reports were. No company or pilot is going to dispatch an aircraft to an airport with the intention of overrunning the runway. Accidents happen, and I'm just glad to hear that no one was hurt.

Like I said. I don't know if/when the braking action report was generated. If there was a recent report, disregard my rambling. But how do we prevent this in the future? When a quiet airport gets notification of a diversion at an odd hour of the night, wake up farmer Joe and have him go drag racing on the runway a few times with the airport SUV.

I'm not kidding at all. Previous employer would use nearby coastal airports as alternates for coastal destinations. I was very leery of that, sometimes the only difference between the two airports was that one was close to urban stuff and surrounded by a lot of pavement, which was warm from the sun and tended to keep the marine layer at bay just a little longer in the evening.

I always like it when I get CRW or ROA as alternates. Just the places I want to go when the weather sucks!