B737-700
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Inflight Event / Encounter Fuel Issue
Flight Crew Landed in Emergency Condition; General Declared Emergency; General Maintenance Action
Aircraft
During approach; upon configuring to flaps 40 we received a Leading Edge (LE) Slats in transit amber illumination. With the Tower/ATC permission we executed a 180 degree turn out of traffic followed by additional vectors while we performed the QRH procedures for this problem. The ultimate requirement of this checklist was to perform a flaps 15 landing at a target approach speed of flaps 15+ 15 KTS. In the interim First Officer declared an emergency with ATC due to our flight control problem and our rapidly diminishing fuel state. It was a clear day and we were only minutes away from possible divert to three large airports. I notified Dispatch via phone patch of our problem and they asked if we could go into our destination at flaps 15. Since I was busy with the QRH completion I asked them to send us the data via ACARS. It arrived just in time; because we were now approaching a minimum fuel status and I was just about to divert. The data was good with auto breaks set at 3/ flaps 15; so we continued to a successful/uneventful landing at our destination. Our gross weight at touchdown was about 111k; hence our ability to have the performance necessary for a flaps 15 landing. Emergency response vehicles followed us off the runway until we terminated our emergency status.The cause of the annunciation we had was a #6 slat in transit light on the overhead panel. This precipitated the forward panel annunciation and our airspeed tape lower buffer margin readouts (yellow band) thinking the aircraft did not have proper flap configuration. The top of the band was 20 KTS above flaps 40 target speed. This ended up being a #6 slat sensor problem rather than the slat actually being out of position; but the results were the same.
B737-700 Captain experiences a LE Slat in transit light during approach. QRH procedures are complied with resulting in a flaps 15 landing. Dispatch is asked to do the performance calculations for landing on the relatively short runway with flaps 15 and finds the runway adequate.