This image provided July 24, 2013 by the National Transportation Safety BOard(NTSB) shows Southwest Airlines Flight 345 sitting on runway 4 at LaGuardia Airport in New York.(Photo: HO, AFP/Getty Images)



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WASHINGTON – Federal investigators found some friction between the experienced pilots aboard the Southwest Airlines plane that landed hard on its nose gear at New York's LaGuardia airport, according to documents released Tuesday.


The nose-gear of the Boeing 737-700 punched up into the plane's electronics bay and it skidded 2,175 feet to a halt on July 22, 2013. Nine people suffered minor injuries on the flight with 145 passengers and five crew members.


Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board released factual documents about operations of the flight and interactions between crew members, but the board has yet to draw conclusions about what caused the accident. Southwest fired the captain in October 2013.


The captain, 49, flew for Southwest more than a decade and had 12,000 hours of flight time, including 2,600 as pilot in command on a 737, according to investigators. Southwest had hired the first officer, 44, a year-and-a-half before the accident, after he spent 20 years in the Air Force, investigators said.


The first officer flew the plane from Nashville, but said that the captain was giving instructions about the landing. They avoided thunderstorms in the area, but they approached the airport with a tail wind the captain said reached more than 30 mph.


The pilots agreed to set the plane's wing flaps at 40 degrees, rather than the customary 30 degrees, to help slow the plane down, according to investigators. But the first officer told investigators he landed with 30-degree flaps about 98% of the time, and that the higher drag of 40 degrees meant the pilot had to be "on his game."


When the plane was about 1,000 feet off the ground, the captain noticed that the flaps were still at 30 degrees, so she set them to 40 degrees.


The first officer told investigators "she was directing and coaching him on how to do the descent and he had the feeling that she would rather have been flying the airplane."


As the plane got over the runway with warning lights suggesting they were too high, the first officer said he felt the captain's hand on top of his, retarding the throttle.


He told investigators he never had a captain pull throttle back while he was approaching a landing, but the captain said she only put her hand over his without touching him.


The captain told investigators "she believed that if she did not act, the airplane would have continued to float past the touchdown zone."


"Get down, get down, get down," the captain said, according to a transcript of the voice recorder.


At the last moment, the captain took the controls and said, "I got it," according to the transcript. Boeing analysts said the switch happened 32 feet in the air, 710 feet after the start of the runway.


The plane landed nose first, hard enough that one flight attendant reported suffering a whiplash injury and persistent headaches, according to an investigator's report.


The board will continue to review reports and information from the investigation before determining a probable cause for the accident, and possible recommendations to avoid repeating the problem.


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