DALLAS- Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials are investigating after a Southwest (WN) flight flew unusually low over Oklahoma early Wednesday, triggering an altitude warning from air traffic control.
An automated warning sounded, prompting an air traffic controller to alert the pilots of Flight 4069 that the jet had descended to a low altitude nine miles from Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) informed USA TODAY.
Southwest Boeing 737 Drops
The automated system, known as the Minimum Safe Altitude Warning (MSAW), alerts controllers when an aircraft gets too low, according to the FAA’s website.
“Southwest 4069, low altitude alert. You good out there?” the air traffic controller asked just after midnight Wednesday, according to an audio archive of transmissions from LiveATC.net.
The flight from Las Vegas, a Boeing 737-800, had been cleared for a visual approach from the northwest, according to The Oklahoman.
Transponder data indicates the plane descended to approximately 500 feet as it passed over a high school in Yukon, a city in Canadian County about 18 miles northwest of downtown Oklahoma City.
Similar Incident
This incident marks the second altitude-related event at Southwest Airlines in just over two months currently under FAA investigation.
On April 11, Southwest Flight WN2786 dropped to 400 feet above the Pacific Ocean near a Hawaiian island, reported FAA.
According to a memo Southwest distributed to pilots, obtained by Bloomberg, the plane briefly descended at “an abnormally high rate of more than 4,000 feet per minute” before the pilots pulled up to avoid crashing into the water.
The flight crew executed a “roller coaster maneuver,” as reported by the outlet, to prevent a collision with the ocean.
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