Snowy Runway Suspected in Crash

6-Year-Old Killed In Car Was Singing A Christmas Song

Runway conditions at Chicago's Midway International Airport were reported to be "fair to poor" by a pilot who landed just minutes ahead of a Southwest Airlines jet that slid off the landing strip and slammed into vehicles on a road Thursday night, officials said yesterday.

The accident killed 6-year-old Joshua Woods of Indiana. He was riding in the back seat of his family's Pontiac sedan, singing along with a Bruce Springsteen Christmas song, when the 737 crashed through a chain-link fence and hit the car.

The Woods family of five had just stopped at a McDonald's and were driving near the northwest corner of Midway, according to lawyer Ronald A. Stearney Jr., who is representing the family. Joshua and his two siblings -- ages 4 and 1 -- were eating in the back seat when their father, who was driving, heard a jet engine's roar, Stearney said.

Seconds later, the vehicle was pinned underneath the hulking fuselage as snow poured down. The father saw one of the 737's jet turbines spinning and "thought it would suck him in," Stearney said. The father climbed through a window of the crumpled sedan and pulled out his 4-year-old. He could not reach the infant or see Joshua.

When paramedics arrived, they used a hydraulic tool to rescue the 1-year-old and pull Joshua's body from the wreckage. The father remains in a hospital; the children were released and the wife checked herself out, Stearney said.

Two passengers on the 737, which flew to Chicago from Baltimore-Washington International Airport, suffered minor injuries, a Southwest spokesman said, and their names were not released.

The accident ends a stretch of nearly three years without a fatal commercial aviation accident in the United States. The last previous fatal crash occurred in January 2003, when a small US Airways Express flight crashed shortly after takeoff from Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, killing all 21 people aboard.

Safety experts said the crash of Southwest Flight 1248 bore a strong resemblance to an August accident in Toronto when an Air France plane overshot a runway during a thunderstorm and landed in a ditch, bursting into flames.

Experts said investigators are likely to focus on Midway's runway conditions at the time of the accident and whether the plane touched down too far down the runway, as well as looking at other related weather conditions. The airport received 7.7 inches of snow Thursday afternoon and evening, which fell at a rate of one inch per hour. After the crash, the airport closed its runways and airlines canceled more than 400 flights there and at O'Hare International Airport.

"Snow was definitely having a significant impact on both airports' operations," said Wendy Abrams, spokeswoman for Chicago Airport System, which operates both airports.

Officials said that three planes had landed on the same runway -- 31C -- in the 30 minutes before Flight 1248: a 757, a 737 and a Gulfstream G4. The pilots of the first two planes reported that the first two-thirds of the runway were clear but that braking on the last third of the runway was "fair to poor" because of the snow.

The pilot of the G4, who landed 2 1/2 minutes before Southwest Flight 1248, said conditions were "fair to poor" along the entire length of the 6,500-foot runway, said a source close to the investigation who would not speak on the record because of the probe. Runway 31C is relatively short for commercial airplane use and cannot accommodate an aircraft larger than a 757. The runway is shorter than those at Reagan National Airport.