Whoa There, Big Fella

A Southwest Airlines jet had a tough landing in a snowstorm in Chicago and ended up sliding off the end of the runway:

A Southwest Airlines flight from Baltimore to Chicago slid off a runway at Midway International Airport and onto a nearby street as it attempted to land amid heavy snow and wind, authorities said Thursday.

Two passengers on the Boeing 737 suffered minor injuries, and as many as seven people on the ground were hurt, Aviation Department spokeswoman Wendy Abrams said. Ninety-eight passengers were on board and have since been evacuated.

The weather conditions I saw on TV looked pretty rough - heavy snow which must have made the braking conditions almost nonexistent. They landed on a 6,300 foot runway, which in dry conditions, is plenty long enough for a 737 (they land in 5,200 feet in Orange County all the time). In situations like this, incoming pilots pretty much have to rely on descriptions of the ground conditions from the tower and from reports from other pilots. Given how heavy the snow was falling, conditions could have changed pretty significantly in a short time. If the plane landed a little long in those conditions, it would be easy to slide off the end.

Although I'm not wild about Southwest's cattle call boarding process, they do run a very safe airline. Despite flying hundreds of flights a day, I can only remember one other incident involving Southwest and that was a plane that ran off the end of the Burbank runway in 2000 and ended up in the gas station across the street. It actually looked like he'd pulled in there to fill-up.

Thankfully, as of this writing, no one has died. It could have been so much worse.

UPDATE 9:23 pm: There are now reports that a child in one of the cars that was struck when the jet crossed the street has died.