Or hell, they could have taken the even-safer option and informed ATC they were going to hold until FedEx landed.

Regardless, I think it's too early to lay definitive blame until the NTSB report comes out.

Commercial pressures. Holding for Fedex would have added a few mins, maybe lost them their place in the queue, etc. It's not a reason to act unsafely, but it is a factor.

> Commercial pressures. Holding for Fedex would have added a few mins

They spent a minute extra before starting their takeoff roll; it wouldn't have hurt to wait an additional 5 minutes. Commercial flights build in a generous margin for ground ops these days. I doubt this was a factor in this specific case.

> maybe lost them their place in the queue, etc.

They were at the runway already, there's no way for them to have lost their place in the queue for that runway 18L [1].

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/AUSFAA.p...

> They were at the runway already, there's no way for them to have lost their place in the queue for that runway 18L [1].

Sure there is, enter the runway at bravo, right turn foxtrot, left on alpha and join the conga line. Happens all the time at places like JFK (admittedly Austin is not JFK).

>> They were at the runway already, there's no way for them to have lost their place in the queue for that runway 18L [1].

> Sure there is, enter the runway at bravo, right turn foxtrot, left on alpha and join the conga line. Happens all the time at places like JFK (admittedly Austin is not JFK).

This routing appears to require the SouthWest aircraft to enter the active runway with FedEx Heavy on Final to that end, presumably the problem we're trying to avoid ...

In both cases, SW would be well within their rights to say "unable to comply".

You’re assuming situational awareness, but they would have been running checklists preparing for takeoff, and may not have heard how far away the fedex was. I didn’t think they took overly long, and they weren’t instructed to hurry.

The Southwest flight announced that they are ready after presumably holding short of the runway to do exactly what you just said. ATC also informed them that there was a 767 3 miles out right after reading the take off clearance. The Southwest crew read back the take off clearance, so presumably they also heard the bit about the other plane. Even without being instructed to expedite the departure, they should at least have realized that they don't have a ton of time on the runway.

More will surely be revealed in the follow up investigation and right now it's all armchair piloting. But I too am a little surprised the Southwest flight took its sweet time to do anything and was seemingly unaware of what was going despite being explicitly informed.

Totally agree we should wait for the investigation. It’s going to be very interesting.

To your point though, we also don’t know what was going on in the cockpit of the 737. Even if they were aware of how close the FedEx jet was, it’s entirely possible something went wrong that caused them to delay the takeoff roll (assuming it was delayed).

There are plenty of things that could have gone wrong on the ground. Separating traffic is the ATCs job and clearly there was a loss of separation. Very hard for me to see how this could be Southwest’s problem particularly since they weren’t yet airborne.