COCKPIT SYSTEM WARNED CREW PILOT TOLD TO PULL UP DURING STEEP DESCENT INTO BURBANK.

Byline: Donna Huffaker Staff Writer

BURBANK - A cockpit warning system alerted a Southwest Airlines jetliner pilot to ``pull up'' from a steep descent in the seconds before the plane overshot a runway at Burbank Airport, authorities said Tuesday.

Engines remained at low or idle power settings before touching down at 208 mph and at an angle of descent in excess of 6 degrees, about 3 degrees steeper than normal, National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall said in a statement.

These new details came from an examination of Southwest Airlines Flight 1455's cockpit voice and data recorders in Washington, D.C. Investigators said the cause of the crash is unknown, and their examination may take nine months to a year.

Local pilots and aviation experts said the plane's steep descent and accelerated speed at touchdown sounds like pilot error.

``They were too high and too . . . (fast) to make a landing,'' said Frank Tullo, an aviation consultant and retired airline pilot with 40 years of flying experience.

According to Hall, the cockpit recorder picked up the jetliner's computers alerting the pilots audibly about the ``sink rate'' and to ``pull up.''

Tullo, who has flown into Burbank Airport many times, said those warnings may have meant the pilot was being warned to abort the landing and return for another try.

Instead, the Sunday night flight from Las Vegas continued its descent, skidded off the rain-slick runaway, careened through a fence and ended up on Hollywood Way before smashing into a car and stopping short of a Chevron gas station.

According to the recorders, the plane was traveling about 37 mph when it hit the fence.

Of the 142 people on board the Boeing 737-300, six people, including the pilot, were treated and released from Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.

Passengers and crew members scrambled to safety through emergency exits and slid down inflatable ramps. Firefighters sprayed fire-retardant foam to prevent spilled fuel from igniting.

The regional director for aviation for the NTSB's southwest regional office, Preston Hicks, said Tuesday it is too early in the investigation to focus on any one factor.

``We're still looking at everything - the weather, the flight crews, their training, the proficiency systems, the airport environment,'' he said.

Tullo said a landing speed of 208 mph, or 181 knots, is fast for a 737 to land and extremely fast for the Burbank runway, particularly because the landing strip is short. Also, he said, there is very little room for overrun, as evidence by the plane's coming to rest on Hollywood Way.

Mark Stewart, director of pilot operations for professional pilot training at Burbank Airport, said a 6-degree descent angle is ``quite a bit off.''

The warning system is activated when the vertical descent rate is too high for that particular mode of flight, he said, noting the information released by the NTSB appears to point to pilot error.

``If the judgment was not to go around (and try another landing), they obviously made the wrong decision,'' Stewart said. ``But nobody, no matter how many hours you have, is going to have a perfect judgment.''

Another factor that may have contributed to overrunning the runway was a tail wind of less than five knots, Tullo said.

``You add a 5-knot tail wind to an airplane that is high and going very fast and it's going to be very hard for that plane to stop on the runway,'' Tullo said.