Juggling responsibilities

At some point, there’s eventually a miscue and a plate breaks. This happened to my first officer and me last fall when a combination of weather, air traffic control (ATC) routing, and a full airplane led to us unwittingly exceeding the operating limitation of the Boeing 737 we were flying.

In New York before departure, I reviewed the flight plan and dispatch release for the flight to Washington, D.C. Short, easy flight, right? Nope. A line of weather was approaching Washington from the west, and I looked incredulously at my flight plan, which had us flying at 8,000 feet south along the Atlantic coast to join an arrival route beginning south of Richmond, Virginia. This nonsensical routing added nearly 45 minutes to the scheduled 35-minute flight time, required thousands of pounds of extra fuel, and would strain the connections of many of the 170 passengers we were carrying.

I called the airline’s dispatch department to find out on what planet this made any sense. The dispatcher explained that her hands were tied by the traffic management unit of ATC—this was the only approved route because of the approaching weather. I explained that the lengthy routing would delay our arrival to the point that the weather would meet or beat us to Washington, thereby defeating the purpose of this so-called weather reroute. She agreed but said she couldn’t do anything about it on her end. This was the only approved route.

Next, I pleaded for relief with clearance delivery at our departure airport while the airplane was filled with the extra fuel required for the long routing. If we were going to be stuck at 8,000 feet, why couldn’t we fly via tower en route control, a relatively direct routing that would get us back on schedule ahead of the weather, despite being capped at 250 knots below 10,000 feet? Again, we were stymied and told by clearance delivery that we could try to get revised routing but only after we were airborne.

After takeoff, heading south along coastal New Jersey, we pleaded with McGuire Approach, which threw us some sanity. We were rerouted westward near Atlantic City, New Jersey, crossed north of Dover, Delaware, continued across Maryland’s Eastern Shore, then north of Baltimore for an arrival that would get us back on time, ahead of the weather and protecting our passengers’ connections. We were also cleared to climb to 14,000 feet, allowing us to accelerate above 250 knots. The plan was working, although we were a busy crew programming in the multiple reroutes in addition to our normal flight tasks.

We could see the menacing skies to the west as we slid down final in Washington, D.C. I was feeling great that we completed the task and gave our passengers the time needed to make their connections. We taxied to the gate and after the parking brake was set, a message scrolled off the printer telling us we had landed overweight. Ugh, it all came flooding back to me. The full cabin, the long original route requiring a lot of fuel, the subsequent huge shortcut that saved thousands of pounds of fuel, the multiple reroutes that distracted us on an already very busy flight all contributed to this blunder. While we went to great lengths to keep a schedule, beat the weather, and preserve passenger connections, we completely dropped the ball when it came to honoring our maximum landing weight. Had we noticed this detail we could have burned the extra 1,300 pounds by any number of processes and still arrived on time.

Soon after patting ourselves on the back for the efforts we made, we sheepishly had to confess our crime to maintenance who were now tasked with an overweight landing inspection prior to the next scheduled flight of the airplane. I also had to break the bad news to the next crew waiting on the jetway. Turns out the line of weather we were racing had now moved in and shut down the airport for them anyway.

While filling out all the required paperwork confessions to the airline, FAA, and NASA, I strategized how to avoid this type of mishap in the future. I wrote some notes on my briefing cards and am now spring-loaded to check landing-weight limitations any time there is a significant short cut thrown my way. Boeing’s new 737 Max jets now have maximum landing weight displayed right on the primary flight display—a feature that I, for one, will appreciate.