Plane Scraped Wingtip, One Set Of Wheels Left Pavement

The FAA is looking into why an American Airlines MD-80 landed erratically in Charlotte, North Carolina Sunday night, scraping a wingtip and partially leaving the pavement during the landing at night in poor visibility.

The agency would also like to know why it took American four hours to notify them of the incident.

"The Wall Street Journal" reports the airliner was making an approach to Charlotte on autopilot in drizzle and fog about 2245 EST Sunday night when the crew was alerted that they were somewhat off course. The crew made a determination that the autopilot was acting erratically, and decided to hand-fly the approach. The disengaged the autopilot at about 300 feet AGL. On touchdown, the left main gear left the runway getting into soft ground. According to sources with knowledge of the event, as the pilots corrected the swerve and got the airplane back on the runway, the right wingtip hit the ground.

No one on board the airplane was injured.

Preliminary internal airline data indicate the crew had been on duty for about 14 hours before the landing attempt. The FAA and NTSB are looking into fatigue as a factor, as well as the pilot's judgement, according to the paper.

American's procedures state that if a problem comes up below 1,000 feet on an instrument approach, pilots are trained to declare a missed approach and go around to try again.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.ntsb.gov