FAA investigates Southwest flight that crashed in Hawaii just a few hundred meters above the sea

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating a Southwest Airlines passenger flight that crashed off the coast of Hawaii in April just a few hundred feet above sea level.

Weather conditions on the island of Kauai caused the pilots of Southwest Flight 2786 to abort an attempted landing at Lihue Airport on April 11 before the flight plunged steeply toward the ocean, according to an air traffic control audio recording obtained by liveatc.net and obtained by CBS News. The flight eventually returned to Honolulu, where it landed safely.

Bloomberg News was the first to report the incident, citing a memo Southwest distributed to pilots last week that said the plane plunged 400 feet into the sea. Bloomberg News said the Boeing 737 Max 8 jet briefly descended at more than 4,000 feet per minute before the flight crew pulled it up to avoid a disaster. There were no injuries on the flight.

In a statement to CBS News, Southwest Airlines said the “incident was handled appropriately.”

“Nothing is more important to Southwest than safety. Thanks to our robust safety management system, the incident was appropriately handled as we always strive for continuous improvement,” Southwest Airlines said on Friday.

On Thursday, federal officials said They investigated an unusual rolling motion on another Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8, possibly caused by a damaged backup power control unit.

The FAA said it is working with Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board to investigate the incident on a flight from Phoenix to Oakland on May 25. Southwest said it is working with the FAA and Boeing.

According to the FAA, the plane entered a “Dutch roll,” which is a combination of yaw, tail skidding, and wingtip-to-wingtip rocking of the plane – a motion said to resemble the movements of a Dutch ice skater.

Updated information from the NTSB on Friday said the incident occurred when the plane was at an altitude of about 34,000 feet.

Pilots are trained to recover from this condition, and about an hour later the plane landed safely in Oakland.