WASHINGTON — The captain of a Southwest Airlines Co. plane that skidded on its belly at New York's LaGuardia Airport in July 2013 wrested control from the co-pilot and reduced power shortly before the landing, new documents show.
"I got it," the captain said as she took over the controls four seconds before the plane made an unusual nose-down landing instead of settling onto the main wheels beneath the wings, according to a transcript of the cockpit conversation made public Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The front landing gear collapsed under the weight, causing minor injuries to nine people and forcing LaGuardia Airport to shut down that day. The captain may not have followed airline procedures when she took the controls and at other times during the flight, according to the NTSB, which is still investigating the accident and didn't draw a definitive conclusion today.
"We continue to cooperate with the NTSB and look forward to the final report," Brandy King, a spokeswoman for Dallas- based Southwest Airlines, said Tuesday. She declined to comment further because the investigation remains open.
The captain was fired after the accident, Southwest said Oct. 2, 2013. A spokeswoman for the airline, Linda Rutherford, declined at the time to specify why the airline took that action. The co-pilot was ordered to take additional training.
The documents released include transcripts from the cockpit recorders, photos of damage to the airplane and runway as well as statements from airport ground controllers.
Under Southwest's flight rules, the pilots should have aborted their landing at LaGuardia because they hadn't properly set the movable panels on the wings as they descended below 1,000 feet altitude, according to the documents.
A split second before hitting the runway, the captain inhaled and uttered an unspecified expletive, according to the NTSB's transcript.
The plane skidded down the runway for about 18 seconds. "Oh my god," the captain said.
The incident, in which the plane wasn't properly set up and stabilized for landing, falls into a category of accidents that has received increased attention from safety advocates, including the Alexandria, Virginia-based Flight Safety Foundation.
The New York crash, along with the 2013 crash of an Asiana Airlines Inc. plane in San Francisco, may have been prevented if pilots had opted to abort their landings when it became clear that everything wasn't in order, according to NTSB documents.
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