A Polish passenger plane arriving in the Russian region of Kaliningrad mistakenly landed at a military airbase instead of the local civilian airport.

The plane, operated by Poland's Lot Airlines, landed at a Russian military airfield a few miles away from its intended destination of Khrabovo civilian airport, ITAR-Tass news agency reported.


Anyone knows details on this one?

Very vague here:

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_640283.html?menu=

Don't know about this incident. However, in a former life I remember aircraft often made an unplanned fly through of Dishforth when they were actually after Leeming.

But hey, they were both just off the A1 and right next to a roundabout, could have happened to anybody - and you would be amazed how often it did :D

Bassersdorf (near ZRH) has caught a few, also.

I seem to remember a story of a BA 747,classic I think,aiming for St Athan instead of CWL when it was on its way to BAMC for a maintenance input

A French charter jet landed at Aqaba instead of Eilat a number of years ago, and a German charter jet full of Swedish netballers destined for Malta landed at Hal Far instead of Luqa...

In the early 60's an airliner on its way to LHR landed at Northolt, a military airfield.

Didnt a 737 land at Langford Lodge instead of Belfast a few years ago?

Well...
It DID seem to happen before..
I've been given examples from the 60's (what , about forty years ago..) by some of you here. How often does it happen today, one lands at the military field by mistake.... :) ???

Also in the sixties, a Qantas 707 and an Air India flight landed at RAF Changi by mistake. Paya Lebar was the civil airport of Singapore at the time. However, both runways were 02/20, only a few miles apart.

a spantax convair (880 or 990) in hamburg finkenwerder (where airbusses are assembled) instead of hamburg fuhlsbuettel also comes to mind (late 70's ??)

Hi reynoldsno1, do you have any details/history of that Luqa/Hal Far mix up in Malta?

Rgds,

320DRIVER

It's dead easy - just a combination of circumstances. As a Heathrow controller I've personal experience of:

a) A/c mistaking Northolt for Heathrow and ATC insisting that they turn left a bit!
b) A foreign 707, when told "12 miles from touchdown on 09L", having been turned onto the ILS at 4000 ft replied, no we're 150 miles from touchdown; our destination is Manchester".
c) A foreign DC8 landed at Heathrow and as he tirned off the runway said "Sh*t; we're supposed to be at Gatwick".

In the late fifities an RAF Comet, with the Duke of Edinburgh on board, landed at disused Takoradi in Malta instead of RAF Luqa. Taxiied round and took off again for the three mile flight. Won't mention the highly respected captain's name in case he is still with us.

Only 4 or 5 years ago, a Northwest 747 landed at BRU, while he should have been at FRA.

Also, what about the Saudia 747 classic that landed at the Air Force base at Madras by mistake a few years ago. All the seats and galleys had to be removed so that it could take off again.

I've heard that people landing at Omaha in Nebraska often landed at Offutt AFB by mistake - hence a comment appeared in one airline's flight briefing area: "keep off utt"!!

A BEA Viscount once landed at RNAS Abbotsinch (now EGPF) instead of Renfrew Airport

I heard a story of a guy who owns a massive warehouse on the approach to Los Angeles he got "Welcome to San Francisco" painted on the roof just to scare the pax !!!!!


rt

Don't forget March 2001 - TWA 641(MD-80) landed at Craig-Moffat instead of Yampa Valley(17 miles away), then got stuck in the mud!!

Remember in the '80s while working at airfield in North Scotland, radar got confused between a P3 and an E3 and sent them both to the wrong place. Poor marshaller had a hell of a shock when the P3 he was expecting appeared to have a very large dinner plate on the top.

Heard of pilots tyring to land at McClellan Palomar airport landing at the nearby Marine base instead! (Cant recall name of marine base at the mo).

Also Tiuajna (spelling?) you have to be very careful which airport you land at in bad weather as they are very close - apparently pilots on their first trip down there have been confused before and had all sorts of fun and games when they landed...

Deeko 01:

I think your 737 at Langford Lodge was a Dan 748.

Brakedwell:

Takoradi is in Ghana not in Malta! Do you perhaps mean Ta'Qali?

How Could this happen??

Because Humans are involved!!!!!!!!!!!

didn't the Northolt incident have something to do with gas Holders getting mixed up? ....... (it was a long long time!!!)

The story I heard was that a gasometer in the vicinity of H'row had some markings on the top which gave visual guidance towards the airport. As the gas emptied, the gasometer would descend and turn, hence the markings might point towards N'holt !

A likely tale !! ;)

I believe the incident at Hal Far/Luga happened in the early 70's. The airfields are not far apart, and HF was used as a relief landing ground by the RAF.
It was the German operator's first flight to Malta, and he landed successfully and then asked for taxiing instructions. The Luqa tower was somewhat mystified, as they couldn't see him , and had to ask him his position. A question & answer session then followed until they established that he was a couple of miles short.

There was another airfield near Luqa, called Ta'qali I think, and ISTR that there had been some similar incidents there as well. Ta'qali was completely closed and unusable by the 70's.

More than one aircraft has landed at Sharjah thinking it was in Dubai, (in the 'old' days!).

In fact there is a warning printed on the Jeppesen approach plate for Dubai, not to mistake Sharja for Dubai.

My first approach to Londonderry surprise me when I saw a runway in pretty much the right direction, but we seemed a bit high. I asked the training captain that I was flying with and checked my plate. It was Ballykelly. It all made sense from there on in, but is a lesson to learn.

Unfortunately it is an easy thing to confuse two close airfields, and I can understand how the mistake could arise. Particularly after a long haul red eye, approach to minimums type of situation.

to add to the list.....

landed at Sharjah instead of Dubai. a case of scotch was sent to the tower...I know this to be true but it did not absolve the crew!

:(

heard one excuse for this before:

-following spurious side lobes on an ILS glideslope indicator (from the correct airfield), ignored the dodgy looking (ie diagnosed U/S) localiser reading, over stimulated from visual contact and headed for (eg) Ormond Beach and not Daytona Beach..


Aircraft (727?) was stripped naked, given a sip of A1 and hopped over to Daytona..

patience

Two incidences in India I know of. One was the Saudia Classic
mentioned at the start of the thread which landed at the Airforce base at nearby Tambaram instead of the Madras Civil Airport.

The second less well known one was one of the inaugral flights of the Indian Domestic Operator, Jet Airways (9W) landing at the
airforce field at Coimbatore in South India instead of the adjacent civilian field.The aircraft was a 737 300 operating from BOM.
Jet had quite a few VIPs assembled to greet the inaugral flight and I guess neither them nor the airforce folks were very amused with this attention catching event!This happened if I remember correctly, the day the then new carrier started operations in India.

RSO

on the subject of the 707 at northolt. if you look eastwards towards london from lhr there are 2 gasometers. one is on the approach to northolt and one is on lhrs approach. the northolt one has no on the side, if i remember correctly its next to southhall station. the lhr one has lhr or something like that on the side. i remember a b737 of britannia landing at gutersloh when it should have been at wildenrath! wot happened was it was ex lionheart in 84, mod was using airliners as troop transports . most of the aircraft went to gut and this guy had just got so used to going to gut that he landed at gut. there wasnt a problem cos he was empty in to pick up troops going home. lionheart was quite impressive, its not every day at an raf station you have 2 747s a tristar and a 757 on the asp.

My late father recalled making this kind of mistake in a Beau in WWII. I have tried to find the story in his book but cannot locate it at short notice.

It was two fields on the North Devonshire coast - I THINK - but don't make suggestions as I cannot recall. Anyhow, when they realised that they were on the wrong field, they just taxied back to the end of the grass strip and hopped the three miles to where they should have been. My father navigating (no electronics or fancy gasometers), was advised by his pilot as to the correct nature of his parentage :eek:

Fortunately, it was not an operational flight and no one to notice. The folks at the wrong field just waved cheerily!!

That'll be Ta'Qali (not Takoradi which is somewhere in W. Africa) brakewell [pronounced Ta<pause>Ali].

I know, 'cos I used to live just next door to it in the '70's.
Locals used it for drag racing. You couldn't have landed much on it.

Think it used to be the main RAF airfield during WW2.

...and for the odd occasion when pilots landed at the correct airfield:

The RAF groundcrew at Wyton used to take great delight in leaping up to a recently arrived aircraft, with the cheery greeting "Good morning Sir, welcome to Wittering-what fuel would you like?"

And then leave as the argument broke out between the pilot and the navigator.

Hi canberra,

The gasholder with NO on the side was at South Harrow and was demolished over five years ago. The Southall gasholder has LH on the side and is on the approach to Runway 23 at EGLL at about 2nm final.

I always wondered, did it mean "NOrtholt", or "NO, dummy this ain't Heathrow!