You weren't, perchance, in the
JS saying: "I reckon that's it in the distance there, Boss." ?
Ha, ha, no I was on another trip in one of the company's other aircraft. The funniest thing was I was standing in front of our hangar when they returned home (they were in Cancun for a week) and boss's girlfriend's kids came running up to me when they got off the aircraft yelling, "X landed at wrong airport, we're calling him 'wrong airport X' now." That was the first I had heard about it.
A month later I was a new chief pilot and X was no longer associated with the company.
Back then there was no long range navigation systems for business jets, all we had for navigation was VORs/DMEs and dual ADFs. So we used the ADFs for crossing the Gulf of Mexico when we got out of range of the VORs. When we got close enough to Mexico we would tune in the Cozumel VOR because it was more powerful than Cancun's. Then when we were able to receive the Cancun VOR on number two VOR, we'd change the number one VOR over to that.
Well that night, as they were getting in range of Cancun, the co-pilot reached over and changed the number one, or the
captain's, VOR. Chief Pilot X, yelled at the co-pilot not to change
his radio and changed it back to Cozumel.
He never changed it back to Cancun. So Don, the co-pilot, thought,
'okay, let's see what's going to happen'. Twice more Don tried to bring to X's attention that he was tuned to the wrong VOR and X ignored him. Don told me that it was a clear night, so he just sat in the right seat, talking to the Cancun tower and watched the Cancun airport pass off the right side of the aircraft, watched them fly back out over the Gulf, cross over the island's border, turn downwind, base and then they landed at Cozumel. All this time Don is talking to the Cancun tower and the Cancun tower is tell the Cozumel tower what is happening.
The Cancun tower even relayed to Don that the Cozumel tower cleared them to land. All of this was completely ignored by Chief Pilot X. Don told me that the Cancun tower basically said, 'Tell the fool flying he is cleared to land at the wrong airport.'
Things improved greatly after I took over.
Oh, if you knew 'Chief Pilot X', this story would not surprise you. He's still alive, how no one is really sure.