Nearly a month ago, two Hawaii flights caused a nationwide ground stop for Alaska Airlines. While the situation was inconvenient for passengers impacted by it, the occurrence exemplifies Alaska’s commitment to safety, along with the challenges our reliance on technology causes.
On January 26, 2023, two Alaska Airlines flights departed Seattle-Tacoma International Airport bound for Hawaii. They took to the sky just six minutes apart, and both circled back around to return to SEATAC. The reason? Tail strikes. While not rare, two consecutive tail strikes are monumentally unusual.
Hawaii Flights Caused a Nationwide Ground Stop
As soon as Alaska’s on-duty Director of Operations, Bret Payton, suspended all flight operations, which means that the two Hawaii flights caused a nationwide ground stop. His reason? To discover and correct the cause of the tail strikes to prevent a potentially worse accident from occurring. Thankfully, the ground stop didn’t last long. Alaska’s operations team quickly identified the culprit as a glitch in the performance calculation software used by Alaska called DynamicSource. Specifically, the software was miscalculating aircraft weights by at least 20,000 pounds, meaning pilots were inputting incorrect parameters into their flight computers, causing them to use lower takeoff power than necessary and providing them with an incorrect VR speed.
Alaska’s operations team then quickly implemented a temporary (but safe) workaround and resumed flight ops 22 minutes after the ground stop was ordered. Subsequent investigations by Alaska’s ops team and ALPA found that 30 of Alaska’s 727 flights that day operated with incorrect data. Further, they found that while the data instigated the tail strikes in the Hawaii flights, both flights took off well within their safety parameters and were in no danger of running out of runway.
It’s also worth noting that most aircraft have skids installed on their tails to protect them in such scenarios. However, in this case, the two aircraft involved, a Boeing 737 MAX 9 and a Boeing 737-900, were undamaged, aside from the sacrificial skid.
Final Thoughts
When the two Hawaii flights caused a nationwide ground stop, few (if any) passengers knew what was going on. I’m sure even passengers on the affected aircraft had any idea what was happening until after the fact. And that’s the point. That’s how safe aviation is nowadays – especially at airlines that empower their staff to prioritize safety. However, the incident exemplifies how quickly things can go awry when the technology we rely on fails us. Thankfully, though, even then, there are mitigating procedures in place.