Southwest Airlines Flight 345 Crash Landing at LaGuardia Airport

On July 22, 2013, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 made a hard landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Flight 345 departed Nashville, Tennessee, at 2:50 p.m. and skidded off the runaway at LaGuardia shortly before 6:00 p.m. According to the NTSB, Flight 345 impacted the runway on its nose gear first, causing it to collapse. A proper and safe landing requires that the plane touch down on its main landing gear first.

Southwest Flight 345 had 150 passengers onboard, 16 passengers were reported to have suffered physical injuries.

Below is the latest factual information from the NTSB:

• Evidence from a passenger video and other sources is consistent with the nose gear making contact with the runway before the main landing gear.
• The flight data recorder on the airplane recorded 1,000 parameters and contained approximately 27 hours of recorded data, including the entire flight from Nashville to New York.
• The cockpit voice recorder contains a two-hour recording of excellent quality that captures the entire flight from Nashville to New York and the accident landing sequence.
• Flaps were set from 30 to 40 degrees about 56 seconds prior to touchdown.
• Altitude was about 32 feet, airspeed was about 134 knots, and pitch attitude was about 2 degrees nose-up approximately 4 seconds prior touchdown.
• At touchdown, the airspeed was approximately 133 knots and the aircraft was pitched down approximately 3 degrees.
• After touchdown, the aircraft came to a stop within approximately 19 seconds.
• A cockpit voice recorder group will convene at NTSB laboratories in Washington to transcribe the relevant portion of the flight.

The firm has handled several similar crash landing and runway overrun incidents involving Southwest Airlines and the Boeing 737 model aircraft, including:

• Southwest Flight 1455 runway overrun at Burbank California in 2000;
• Southwest Flight 1248 runway overrun at Chicago Midway in 2005;
• Recently settled claims arising out of Southwest Flight 812 inflight fuselage rupture which involved emotional distress claims.

Kreindler Partners, Dan Rose, Brian Alexander and Justin Green are investigating this crash.