A Famous Case of Potential Engine Fire Termination

The captain of the flight was David Legeros. As of April 29, Legeros began a court battle against Southwest Airlines, seeking injunctive relief for the carrier’s demand to conduct a fitness for duty (FFD) evaluation. The FFD is one of the steps leading up to Legeros’ potential termination.  

Racial discrimination is also alleged in the litigation, with an implication that Southwest has been looking for a viable excuse to end his employment based on Legeros’ mentor activities for people of color and his claim that the airline is resistant to hiring such people.

Legeros has been relieved of duty since September 19, 2023, after a meeting that involved an investigation of the incident that found him to have engaged in serious misconduct. What kind of misconduct?

Despite the mainstream media’s focus on his PA announcement, spoken in Spanish during the emergency, one of the claims was that the misconduct specifically involved allowing the first officer to land the airplane with an engine failure. The airline’s company manual mandates that the captain perform a landing with an inoperative engine.

Big deal, right? Well…kinda.

Certainly, all the first officers I had the honor of flying with were more than competent to handle any type of emergency. Their certificates held the same type rating as mine, and 50 percent of the time they had more experience on the airplane than me. Landing an airplane with one engine inoperative would never have been an issue.  

But it does become an issue of responsibility. At the end of the day, the captain is anointed as the one in charge. Perhaps it’s ancestor worship from the days when the one in the left seat was older, wiser, and more experienced.

More than anything else, thou shalt not deviate from company procedures because those rules were established for rational purposes, most likely as result of someone else’s experience or perhaps mistake. That said, for many years at my legacy airline, the captain was required to land the airplane in an emergency. Later, it became the captain’s discretion.

I remember after an engine failure on a B-767, knowing the rules at that time, I deferred the Chicago O’Hare International Airport (KORD) landing to the captain even though it had been my leg.

It’s pure speculation, but judging by the onboard and ground-based video of the incident, the engine fire may have been the result of a compressor stall. In other words, the airflow was disrupted in the compressor section enough to affect the power being produced. The surging plume of fire behind the right engine might have been an indication. An unobserved bird ingestion could have been the culprit.

Regardless, I’ll assume the crew had to execute an engine fire checklist, which requires shutting off the fuel, the engine bleed system, and the associated hydraulic system, and discharging the extinguishing agent. And then the one-engine approach and landing procedural checklist has to be reviewed, notwithstanding a review of performance data—all the stuff encountered during every recurrent training session.

ATC communications are critical. One pilot should dedicate themselves to that task. And, of course, one pilot should be supplying information to the flight attendants via the interphone so they can prepare themselves and the cabin. Passengers are understandably anxious. A calm, cool, collected PA about the situation and what to expect is a needed part of the communication chain.

The most important task is one pilot has to focus on maintaining control of the airplane. With an engine fire experienced shortly after takeoff, all of the above has to be accomplished at a rapid pace so as to return to the departure airport. Everything described is simply the use of the mantra: aviate, navigate, and communicate.

So, did this actually happen aboard Flight 307?

Reading between the lines of the preliminary injunction filed by Captain Legeros, it would appear that he exercised cockpit resource management (CRM) by directing the copilot to fly.  Also, it appears that the Spanish PA announcement to mostly Hispanic passengers was a form of that CRM, assuming it was completed after the airplane was stabilized and the appropriate checklists complete.

As of this writing, and an unsuccessful attempt to contact Legeros, I have no information as to who actually read checklists and who communicated with ATC. We do know that the copilot landed the airplane because he was instructed to do so. For me, the explanation for that decision seemed suspect.  

Legeros suggested that if airplane control was transitioned to him from the copilot it “could have caused enough jerk to drop the flaming engine.” Sorry, but that theory is contrary to training logic.

As an example, during training exercises at my airline, we often transferred control to the other pilot temporarily during engine-out emergencies once the airplane was stabilized, so that the flying pilot could brief the approach. No “jerk” was involved, nor was the concept that the engine could drop from its pylon mount under the wing ever a consideration.

Having maintained a relationship with chief pilots as a check airman, I became familiar with the protocols involved with disciplinary actions. Specific procedures have to be followed, inclusive of union representation. Although it was called something else at my airline, an FFD involved more than just a psychological evaluation.  

Was the pilot having issues at home? Was substance abuse or alcohol involved? Was there a medical issue? Would more training assist? In the litigation complaint, Legeros implies that the FFD was a methodology to diagnose him insane because this process has been used in the past to terminate pilots that are “particularly sticky.”

I find it hard to believe that Southwest Airlines would attempt to fire Legeros for just one noncompliance issue. The situation to discipline and potentially terminate a pilot is awkward and uncomfortable for everyone involved, so the circumstances have to be irrefutable.

As for discrimination, it has no place in any cockpit. If you could safely fly an airplane, it made no difference if you were male, female, black, white, brown, or purple.

The litigation made references to a “last chance agreement” and a “retraining program,” albeit with a “myriad of extraordinary requirements.” That said, it seemed an avenue existed to avoid termination.

Captain Legeros will have his day in court. Assuming an egregious violation of safety didn’t occur, I hope that a resolution can be found that allows him the opportunity to regain his seat in the cockpit.

This column first appeared in the November Issue 952 of the FLYING print edition.