Southwest Boeing 737: Vibration

Fully loaded with passengers?

That's a lot of luggage......

 

I'll take a stab: retracting the landing gear, one may have experienced a problem or perhaps a wind cross to the gears.

 

Plastic wall panels might be loose; extending flaps might be the sound. Bad weather? Full flight with extra fuel? Could be all of the above.

 

My first thoughts are; runway surface was rough, heavy load required a high V1 and Vr. What you heard was not the airframe creaking and " cracking" , it was probably the interior panels and the overhead...all light and loose sometimes. I experienced the same thing in an L1011 at Salt lake. Full of 310 people , baggage, fuel, and a hot day. A long rattling run, and a Vr of 165 after which the climb-out was a slow and careful process.

 

Click Here Southwest accidents.

Southwest actually has the best safety record for any of the large US airlines that has ever existed.
Southwest has never lost a passenger or crew member in an accident. Ever.

Everything you describe is a normal take-off. I don't know how often you fly, but a B737 at full power, makes a little noise!!!
Next time, relax, enjoy the flight.

I just flew Toronto-Frankfurt-Sofia-London-Toronto

Lufthansa A340-300
Lufthansa B737-300
Air Bulgaria Airbus A320
Air Canada B767-300ER

On the Lufthansa A340, the passenger beside me was praying out loud on take off, and had a death grip on the seat in front.
I explained what was happening, the flaps, speed brakes, gear cycling, spoilers, reversers - by the time we landed, she took it a lot better than the take off!!!

 

I fly Southwest for this exact reason... their safety record alone. That and I know a few of the tech's and how they are on their personal cars... which leads me to how they maintain the planes.

Question ( and I am going to go google now ) I did not see the incident in Dallas at Love field, where a plane over shot the end of the runway and fell across Mockingbird Lane, several years ago, listed as an incident on your link?

Steve

 

Southwest has run quite a few airplanes off of runways, but other than that, they have a great record!

I wouldn't worry too much about the vibration-- some of those old 737s do rattle a bit.

On the other hand, the day after Christmas, I was riding on an Alaska 737 and thought it seemed awfully nice-- so I asked the flight attendant how old it was, and he pointed me to the airworthiness certificate above the forward door-- issued 9 days before!

 

Vivek......

Don't worry about it.

During takeoff everything is stressed to the max physically........noise, vibration, and harshness are overwhelmingly present at this time due to what was said earlier, and it seems to be more common IMHO with the older aircraft. Not due to higher cycles (take off and landings), but probably poorer sound insulation standards and worn interior trim combined with heavy load factors on a hot day.

Southwest has a few old 737-500's around still and they have a maximum weight of some 135,000 pounds....so think of that amount of weight fighting the forces of gravity trying to keep it on the ground, rolling along a rough runway surface, which is magnified by the increasing takeoff speed and the subsequent stresses on the aircraft trying to lift off.......

I have flown in old Fokker 100's.......McDonnell Douglas DC9's......Boeing 707's and 757's....etc....that would have scared the daylights out of you, compared to the feeling on today's Boeing 777 and current Airbus aircraft. You should try flying from the webbed jump seat in the back of a C-130 Hercules.....LOL !!! You ain't felt/heard nothing yet.

 

Reminds me of my flight last week on a Singapore A340. During takeoff, the exit door panels were shaking so hard and the plane was shifting left and right so violently that I seriously thought we weren't going to make it. I used to love flying but I had a landing a few years back where the plane jerked to the right so abruptly that I was convinced that we were going to crash off the runway. I legitimately have a fear of flying now and even the tiniest turbulence has my normally agnostic self praying to God. And it seems like with each and every flight, my fear gets worse and worse.

 

I don't know numbers for a 737 but in my estimation a fully loaded Southwest jet will quite easily out climb an empty Herk, there is really no comparison. It's quite a thrill to take off out of Baghdad on a hot day with a full load of Army guys and wondering if somebody is gonna pop off a missile.

 

The BOEING 737 is one of , if not the most, reliable and efficient smaller jet transports ever. With the CFM-56 engine it is an absolute winner. To give you an idea of how good it is, there is a group trying to design a replacement for a new generation airplane. So far they have been unable to achieve an improvement that exceeds 20 percent. Even with new materials and technology they haven't been able to justify the expense of a new design to beat the current airplane's efficiency. This airplane has a reliabililty rate of nearly 99.9.

 

Even better now that they seem to have worked out the gremlins in the yaw damper!

 

Resurrecting an old thread, as just yesterday I was looking up flight info for a trip I’m taking on Southwest in June. Plane is a 737-800.

Then tonight I see this: https://www.foxbusiness.com/fox-news-travel/southwest-airlines-flight-makes-emergency-landing-denver-engine-part-falls-boeing-737-plane.amp

Can’t say I have a lot of confidence in Boeing after all that’s been in the news, but I know SW has a great safety record, and have flown them often. Especially after seeing this piece today regarding an incident on the exact same type of plane I’m supposed to fly on, am I paranoid for thinking I should cancel and rebook on an airline flying an Airbus? Or is this more a one-off and I ought to trust that SW typically has a better handle on plane condition/maintenance than this?

I don’t particularly like flying, am not a nervous flyer, and realize the most dangerous part of the trip (statistically) is the drive to the airport. But I do like that there’s no chance of plummeting 30,000 feet to one’s death on the drive to the airport.

 

There hasn't been a significant uptick in incidents on Boeing planes. Nor is the rate of incidents on Boeing planes significantly higher than on Airbus. Southwest carriers over 120 million passengers a year and has just a single fatality in the last 25 years! It is ridiculously safe to fly on a Southwest 737.

The only thing that has changed is that every incident on a Boeing plane is now a major news story. It's just another instance of the media making folks paranoid for clicks.

 

Makes sense, and thanks for the perspective.

 

Your statement is incorrect. Southwest had a fatality 6 years ago when there was an engine failure, pieces of the engine hit the fuselage which experienced an explosive decompression. One passenger was partially sucked out and died of her injuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380

 

Yes, thats the single fatality I mentioned.