Southwest plane enters ‘Dutch roll’ mid-flight, triggering FAA investigation

Nick Robertson and The Hill

14 mins ago

(The Hill) – The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating after a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max entered a “Dutch roll” position during a flight last month, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

A Dutch roll is a dangerous pendulum motion that consists of a tail slide and a roll simultaneously. It can be difficult to control and manage, but the pilots of the Southwest flight were able to do so with no reported injuries.

The flight from Phoenix to Oakland, California, on May 25 landed without incident. The FAA suspected that the rollover may have been caused by a damaged emergency generator.

According to a preliminary FAA report, an inspection after the plane landed revealed that a unit that supplies emergency power to the rudder was damaged.

The FAA said other airlines had not reported similar problems.

The investigation comes after Boeing’s 737 Max planes came under scrutiny this year after a door blew out on an Alaska Airlines plane in January. An investigation found Boeing’s manufacturing processes had lax safety controls and manufacturing defects. Since then, the company has been under pressure from regulators and Congress to address the problems.

“There are problems with the safety culture at Boeing. Their priorities were on production and not on safety and quality,” FAA chief Michael Whittaker said in March. “And now we’re really focused on shifting the focus from production to safety and quality.”

The FAA said in early March that its six-week audit of Boeing had “identified several instances in which the company allegedly failed to comply with production quality control requirements.”