Pilots land at wrong airport.
 

Not the first time by a long shot. I remember QF in the 1980's lining up on Hughes Field, miles away from LAX doing a visual approach.

Passenger plane lands at the wrong airport after pilots ignore their navigation equipment.

Passenger plane lands at the wrong airport after pilots ignore their navigation equipment - Travel - NZ Herald News

PPRuNe thread at the time (4 years ago!):

http://www.pprune.org/south-asia-far...g-airport.html

Hey, I once landed at Kaintiba and requested cancel SAR Kamina!:ooh::eek:
Or was it the other way 'round?:confused:

Middle of the Wet, it was...

Any ex PNG lapuns will savvy.:D :E

Don't feel bad about it Pinky. I remember when a Government Airline landed a Green Gravel Truck at Tefalmin instead of Telefomin then had to whistle up a Chook to lift it out as the runway was a tad too short!!

:}

The airports look very similar from the air, and being on the coast the runways are the same direction. The mistake is quite easy if you try and eyeball it, thats what navigation equipment is there to prevent.

In India, the ATIS for Chennai warns pilots not to mistake the nearby military airbase for the civil airport, something to do with a cargo jumbo landing there by mistake.

Taily; A 'Bou?:confused:
Thought those things could get into and out of nearly anything a Bongo Van could!

What navigation equipment?

Air india also came close to landing a 787 at Essendon

TAA came close to landing on the highway at Mackay once..

Skol,
You need to check your facts before you splash!
The airport that was the mistake was Hawthorn which is about 3-4 miles from LAX. You go past it at about 1200' depending on which runway you are landing at in LAX. No excuse for it but LAX in the haze can be an issue specially if ATC has left you high.

RNAV can give you the extended centreline of the runway.
GPS on the runway threshold to give bearing and distance.
ILS/DME tuned in even for visual approach.

That way if you are on short final but your instruments show the airport is 10 miles away it may indicate you are in the wrong place.

A Globemaster trying for 29 at NZCH was going to land on Memorial Drive.

Many years ago now of course

Air India also came close to landing a 787 at Essendon

And Garuda (multiple times).

And United.

I once landed at exactly the correct place, but a month early!

(Tasking cell's mistake, not ours..they sent us in June and the user wanted us in July).

JamieMaree is spot-on SKOL. Having followed the QF across the Pacific from HNL we landed ahead of it into LAX. Later in the evening in SFO the story came out and I cannot recall whether or not the QF boys bought the beers, but maybe they should have. It was late September 1980. BTW, Hughes has been closed now for about 30 years.

I'm quite sure I'm correct, it was in the early 1980's, I was posted to Los Angeles at the time.

I agree, early 1980s. There was a bit more to it though. As I remember, it was only the second QF landing into LAX and the crew were given a "mud map" by the 1st crew which was supervisory crew. The mud map featured fuel tanks as a marker. The trouble was that there were 2 different lots of fuel tanks. One lot not seen by crew number one and that was what caused the confusion.
I was on crew 3 waiting in HNL and we rapidly had the mud map withdrawn from our brief sheets.
Wunwing

Didn't they have an ILS in LAX then? Why use a mud map to fly a visual approach into an unfamiliar Airport???

In the past I've done a visual right base onto 24R from SMO, but that was in blue sky and I'd been there multiple times before.....

I would be amazed if Qantas did not have Jeppesen Approach Plates for LAX and if they had not required operating crews to have done at least one simulated approach to LAX before operating into the facility. It is too long ago to remember exactly, but I am pretty sure we used the ILS for arrival, at least until visual with the runway. We were a B707.

C-17A lands at GA airport instead of Homestead AFB, Florida>>


http://www.google.com.au/url?q=https...JGcerHRtz32FJA

another oops!