performance related incidents & accidents
with the Boeing 737
Insufficient performance
To let pilots realize that performance plays a big part in the daily operation, listed below is a summary of incidents and accidents where the performance of the aircraft was insufficient.
Most of these incidents resulted in runway excursions causing damage varying from minor structural to hull losses with fatalities.
Runway excursions
Runway excursions can be divided in veer-offs (aircraft departs the side of the runway) and overruns (aircraft unable to stop before the end of the runway) and is the most frequent accident cause worldwide (3rd most in EASA countries) and rank in 6th place in terms of fatal accidents.
Landing overruns or RTO (Rejected Take Off) overruns might be caused by incorrect performance analysis and/or weight entry errors, possible due to wrong calculations, or FMC (Flight Management Computer) or computerized performance tool entry errors.
Tail strikes
Tailstrikes are situations where the tail of the airplane touches (scrapes) the ground, either on takeoff or during landing. This might be caused by either over-rotation (pitch attitude too high) but can also be caused by trying to rotate or to land at a too low speed. In turn, this too low (rotation VR - or landing reference VREF - ) speed can, similar to runway excursion situations, be caused by incorrect performance analysis and/or weight entry errors, possible due to wrong calculations, or FMC (Flight Management Computer) or computerized performance tool entry errors.
Boeing 737
This summary only gives an overview of recent incidents and accidents where the Boeing 737 was involved and only those where the (near) runway excursion was not (solely) caused by technical failure. Besides these, realize that most of the performance related incidents (think about eg. FMC weight/speed data entry errors and wrong flap selections) do fortunately not turn into incidents or accidents and therefore will not reach the public.
This overview is updated regularly.
Recent performance related incidents and accidents
Feb 04, 2020
Pegasus B737-800 overran runway 06 at Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen (Turkey)
Very late touchdown after hot and high approach on wet runway in strong tailwind.
Jan 04, 2020
Westjet B737-800 overran wet snow covered runway 14 at Halifax (Canada)
Aircraft landed on runway covered with 100% wet snow with unknown braking action and came to a stop beyond the runway end.
May 02, 2019
Miami Air B737-800 overran runway 10 at Jacksonville (USA) and ended up in the river.
Aircraft landed with flaps 30 and one thrust reverser inop (by MEL) in rainstorm, low visibility and 15 kts tailwind on a wet and non-grooved runway, with a displaced threshold due to a deployed net barrier, leaving an LDA of 7800ft/2370m.
Feb 15, 2019
Lion Air B737-800 overran runway 15 at Pontianak (Indonesia) on landing in heavy rain.
Insufficient performance on a wet runway.
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(Main source: The Aviation Herald)