And didn't a B707 once land at Northolt instead of LHR?
Yes indeed it was 25/10/60 a Pan Am Boeing 707. As I understand they had to strip it down to a shell with minimum fuel to get it out again and across to LHR where it should have been. After that they painted at huge 'NO' on the gasometer on the approach to westerly runway to Northolt and a hugh 'LH' on the gasometer on the approach to LHR. Actually thinking about it even if an American crew were supposed to be landing at Northolt, faced with a big 'NO' may divert anyway
Boeing 707-321, N725PA, Pan American World Airways (PA / PAA)
Actually even worse than landing at the wrong airfield the Army, who constructed Northolt in 1915, put the airfield in the wrong place. Well they would wouldn't they. No Royal Air Force then
They took aerial surveys and had decided to put the airfield to the north of the railway line. To the south is a very swampy area where in fact during the great plague they used to 'bring out the dead' and dump the bodies there where they just sunk. The surveyers got the map upside down and built the strip to the south - where of course it remains to this day. This is one of the reasons that Northolt still suffers from very localised early morning fog in the winter.