They were cleared for the Avatu 1A approach to Kili, landing Rwy 27 at HTKJ. They landed at Arusha thinking it was HTKJ as the runways are the same orientation. There was in fact a light aircraft, C208B, near the end of Rwy 27 due to a flat main tyre. The ET plane was given LDA of 3300m by the controller. When the controller asked him where he was he said he had landed. Tower then realised he landed at the wrong airport, probably Arusha, and gave him the frequency, whereby the pilot asked Arusha tower at which airport he had just landed. Another C208B had just taken off at Arusha on Rwy 27 before the ET 767 landed at arusha, he saw the aircraft on approach, and advised Arusha Tower of the jet about to land there. The tower tried in vain to contact him to go-around, the C208 pilot tried contact the plane on 120.1 (HTKJ freq), but no response.
Great landing, up to the point where he tried to turn a B767-300 on a 30 m wide runway and taxied into soft grass and mud. The passengers were kept on board the aircraft for over 3 hours, some more. Captain wanted stairs brought to the plane. He was complaining of the lack of facilities, until someone reminded him that Arusha airport does not accomodate such large aircraft, and therefore did not require such equipment. Stairs were brought from Kili some hours later. By then the pax were irrate, and demanded to be let off the plane. One idiot passenger opened the overwing exit, walked on the wing and lit a cigarette. The passengers were not told about their current location, but when one local expat resident recognised the school they had attended, as being just nearby, they realised they where not in Kilimanjaro. The flight attendant was reported as giving the standard " welcome to Kilimanjaro" speech.
There was no fuel emergency, there was no emergency declared, the crew (all 3 of them) assumed they were landing in HTKJ. Bottom line! They should have fuel to destination, holding, diversion to alternate, hold for 30 min, and complete an approach at the alternate. ie Nairobi, Mombasa, Dar, Zanzibar.
Other airlines and aircraft landed safely on rwy 27 kili, with the stranded plane on the runway. The kili airport authorities should have cleared the plane sooner, but it took little over an hour to get another plane, with engineers from arusha to kili to repair the plane.
What the crew were thinking? Who knows? When you land at an airfield thats really short 1620m, with destination still 27 nm away, in this case behind you, you may want to start scratching your head. There are no runway lights, approached, nav aids, markers at Arusha. Its a VFR field. If you approach HTKJ, in a 767, you would normally have all nav aids etc programmed in, right?
In the end, a spectacular take off by replacement crew, using less than 75% of the runway at Arusha, to get the plane to kili.
As for the idiots who landed there, well, the investigation will reveal all, we hope.
On a last note, i'm pretty sure that at least one of the crew members on an international flight, with an airline, should be familiar with the destination airport, or have a current route check? how can 3 pilots not know where kili is? howcome they did not ask the whereabouts of the stranded plane when they landed?
