The captain of a Southwest Airlines Co. jet that landed on its nose gear three months ago in New York has been fired, following an accident that came after she took over controls at an unusually low altitude during the final phase of the approach.
Southwest on Wednesday confirmed that after completing its internal review, last week it dismissed the veteran captain, who had 13 years of experience and more than 7,900 hours flying Boeing 737s.
A Southwest spokeswoman didn't identify the captain or elaborate on the reasons for the move. She said the co-pilot, who also wasn't identified, has been ordered to "undergo additional training."
A spokesman for the Southwest Airlines Pilots' Association said the union is disappointed with the airline's decision, partly because an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board hasn't been completed and a probable cause hasn't been officially determined.
The July 22 accident at La Guardia Airport, which disrupted traffic at the busy airport, has attracted attention from the NTSB and outside safety experts because of what some experts see as an apparent breakdown in cockpit discipline. The crash has renewed debate over whether training programs devote enough emphasis to developing decision-making skills pilots need to recognize and swiftly react to hazardous landing approaches. Eight people were hospitalized after the accident, according to the airline.
The Flight Safety Foundation of Alexandria, Va., a leading global advocate for safety programs, recently ramped up efforts emphasizing the importance of properly initiating and executing so-called go-arounds.
The captain at La Guardia, who was monitoring the visual approach, became concerned about landing too far along the runway, according to people familiar with the sequence of events. With the plane roughly 400 feet above the strip, the co-pilot was leaning toward halting the approach and climbing away, according to these people, but the captain pulled back the throttles and took over the controls to try to save the landing.
Airlines typically require cockpit crews to automatically abandon landing approaches if an aircraft's speed or descent rate falls even a bit outside strict limits, or its wings are rocking, at any point during the last 1,000 or 500 feet, depending on the carrier.
The NTSB previously said the nose of the plane pitched down during the last four seconds of the approach, when it should have remained slightly raised. Investigators have found no engine or other malfunctions to account for the maneuver.
The safety board is delving into details of how the crew managed the handover of control, and whether the co-pilot's surprise affected the outcome. The plane's cockpit-voice recorder reveals "a lot of dynamics between the two pilots" during the final seconds, according to a person close to the investigation.
Timothy Logan, Southwest's top flight risk-management official, told an industry conference in August that the La Guardia accident was "a challenging event," partly because "there's a lot going on" in the cockpit during the final few hundred feet.
Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared October 2, 2013, on page A17 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Southwest Dismisses Captain.
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