Southwest B737 Low on Approach to Manchester-Boston Airport

On September 7th, 2024 Southwest is once again is in the spotlight for getting dangerously low on approach to an airport. 

This time, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 was on approach to Manchester-Boston Regional Airport after a routine flight from Chicago-Midway International Airport. After an altitude alert sounded from tower, the approach clearance was cancelled and the flight was sent around to re-attempt the approach. 

Sequence of Events

After completing most of the flight uneventfully, Southwest 1306 was on approach into Manchester at 11,000 feet and initially advised to expect the RNAV (which is GPS) runway 24 approach into the airport. 

At Southwest 1306's request for a more favorable into-the-wind approach, ATC changed their expected approach to runway 17. They then cleared the flight for the Instrument Landing System (or ILS) runway 17 approach into Manchester. 

After clearing Southwest 1306 for the approach Air Traffic Control advised the flight to maintain 2,100 feet until an established point (waypoint BLUUM) on the approach before beginning the final descent. Leading up to this point, 2,100 feet is the minimum safe altitude for the approach, as terrain in the area before reaching BLUUM rises up to near 1,324 feet.

After Southwest 1306 read back their clearance, the flight began to descend down and when passing through 2,000, the ATC got a low altitude alert for the flight. They immediately advised Southwest of the situation, and attempted to get the flight back on a stable approach path. 

When ATC realized that was not happening fast enough, the approach clearance was cancelled and the flight was sent around for a second try. The second try for the same approach followed prescribed altitudes correctly and landed without incident.

The Concern

This is now Southwest's 3rd major low-to-the-ground altitude infraction in the past few months, and it is becoming an alarming trend even with the supposed FAA oversight being conducted with the airline.

With some of these low altitude events occurring with as little spacing as 500 feet between aircraft and terrain/sea, one needs to question whether standard operating procedures (SOP's) within the airline need to be questioned. Perhaps there is a SOP that is causing pilot distraction and leading to these events.

Also, it should be studied if approach changes happened in all three of these events, to see if crew just weren't giving themselves enough time to accommodate for these changes. Regardless, the FAA oversight on Southwest needs to take this latest incident into account and investigate to see just exactly why what happened did happen.

Hopefully, this will be the last of these incidents and the insight can be wrapped up efficiently and quickly, to help pilots across the industry learn to not make whatever mistakes causes these 3 low altitude incidents.