Federal aviation authorities are currently conducting an investigation following a concerning incident involving a Southwest Airlines flight that reportedly flew at dangerously low altitudes over Oklahoma early Wednesday morning. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Flight 4069 triggered an altitude warning while approaching Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City.
The aircraft, a Boeing 737-800 arriving from Las Vegas, activated the Minimum Safe Altitude Warning (MSAW) system, which is designed to alert air traffic controllers if an aircraft descends below a safe altitude threshold. LiveATC.net provided an audio archive where an air traffic controller is heard addressing the flight, “Southwest 4069, low altitude alert. You good out there?” This query was raised shortly after midnight when the jet was detected at a mere 500 feet above ground level, alarmingly close to a high school in Yukon, approximately 18 miles northwest of downtown Oklahoma City.
This incident marks the second altitude-related scrutiny involving Southwest Airlines in just over two months. In a prior episode on April 11, Flight 2786 was reported to have plummeted to 400 feet above the Pacific Ocean near a Hawaiian island. The FAA, which confirmed this earlier event, highlighted that the aircraft had descended at “an abnormally high rate of more than 4,000 feet per minute.” To prevent a disastrous outcome, the flight crew executed what has been described as a “roller coaster maneuver,” according to details from a memo distributed by Southwest to its pilots and first reported by Bloomberg.
These successive incidents have prompted increased vigilance concerning flight safety protocols and the mechanical reliability of aircraft involved in such perilous situations. The aviation community and regulatory bodies remain highly focused on determining the underlying causes of these altitude anomalies to enhance the safety measures and operational standards for commercial aviation.