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Old 13th Sep 2011, 16:28
  #65 (permalink)  
con-pilot

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Join Date: May 2000
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma USA
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One of our airliners was trying to land at El Paso and ended up at the military field just north. Realizing his mistake he took off again and landed at El Paso. He got in more trouble for his unauthorized take off than his original mistake.
The way those two airports are situated it is very easy to lie up on the wrong airport when landing to the south when approaching from the north on a visual approach, even in very clear weather.

I always had the ILS tuned for El Paso no matter how clear the weather was. It is a trap that is very easy to fall into.

One place that was just as bad is no longer an issue. That was Kansas City, Missouri Downtown Airport, which used to be the home base for TWA and Kansas City, Kansas Fairfax Airport just across the river. There one was most likely to mistake the two airports in poor weather conditions while shooting the ILS approach with a cross wind from the west. When you broke out of the clouds around 500 to 1,000 AGL with a west crosswind, the Fairfax runway was right in front of the aircraft, perfectly lined up. Fairfax is now closed, so the problem no longer exists.
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