Southwest Airlines flight from Spokane has harrowing landing in Denver

An Idaho woman had a harrowing ordeal on a Southwest Airlines (SWA) flight out of Spokane on Sunday, with a rough landing process at Denver International Airport (DIA).

Erin Saxe and her family were passengers on Southwest Flight 2767 out of Spokane, heading to Denver, CO. She says the first attempt at landing in Denver was unsuccessful, so a second attempt was mounted. This all happened after the flight had already been delayed several hours.

Saxe says the trip was not very eventful - apart from the delay - until they started to approach DIA, saying, “There was a little bit of turbulence and then there was a really hard landing… there was a big bounce. I’ve taken a lot of flights in my life, it was definitely not normal.”

“(The) bounce didn’t feel recoverable so we started ascending again,” Saxe said.

Flightaware shows the flight path from Spokane for SWA 2767 circling around Denver. Saxe says the unsuccessful first attempt at landing triggered an emergency response from the crew, prompting them to ask passengers to volunteer to help with evacuating the plane and dealing with an emergency landing if necessary, “We, for lack of better words, braced for impact, not knowing what that was going to look like. The entire crew started chanting ‘heads down, don’t move’ over and over, ‘heads down, don’t move’, ‘heads down, don’t move’.”

Saxe was flying on a Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet, and while she does not know what prompted the difficulty in landing, she did say the second time landing at Denver proved to be safe.

“An elderly couple had their heads down and were praying, the girl in front of us was crying… there were cheers, there were tears... it was thankfully a great outcome.”

Southwest Airlines sent KIRO 7 the following statement:

Southwest Flight 2767 landed safely at Denver International Airport on Sunday following a precautionary go-around during the initial landing. No injuries were reported, and our Customers deplaned without incident at their gate. We appreciate the professionalism of our Flight Crew, and we will review the event through our robust Safety Management System.

While a spokesperson for Denver International Airport sent the following statement on the flight:

We can confirm that Southwest Flight 2767 did have a hard landing yesterday around 3:10 p.m. After the landing, the aircraft arrived safely to the gate.