aircraft landing at the wrong airfield
 

I was wondering how often aircraft have landed at the wrong airfield.

Take for example Pan Am Boeing 707 landing at RAF Northolt (anyone have details ?)

I would assume that details would be scarce as to avoid embarrassment but there must have been a few mistakes.

regarding the Boeing 707 / Northolt incident, how was the aircraft flown out again (runway too short) ?

Photo of it's take-off here

Boeing 707-321, N725PA, Pan American World Airways (PA / PAA)

Not as uncommon an occurance as you would think. Here's just a few..................................:hmm:


Wrong Way Landings By Commercial Airliners

A few more titbits from PPRUNE past..............

https://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-133849.html

If the Northolt 707 departed the next morning, presumably it used just a regular crew who were slipping at LHR. Love to have seen the Captain's face when he turned up for the preflight briefing.

707 @ Northolt
 

If I remember correctly, a lot of the equiptment on the 707 was removed, the captain who flew it in was made to fly it out & when he arrived at LHR he was sacked.

tristar500

Notable C-5 incident
 

Aircraft 68-0227 (C-5A) was the first operational loss of a C-5 Galaxy. On 27 September 1974, the aircraft crashed after over-running the runway at Clinton, Oklahoma Municipal Airport during an emergency landing following a serious landing gear fire. The crew mistakenly aligned the aircraft for the visual approach into the wrong airport, landing at Clinton Municipal which has a 4,400 ft (1,340 m) runway, instead of Clinton-Sherman airfield which has a 13,500 ft (4,115 m) runway

Armin Faber in his Fw190. Pembrey instead of Maupertus-sur-Mer. (I remembered his name but had to Google the airfields.)

Shawbury and Sleap and the Gnat. Dishforth and Leeming (both Runway 34). Oh, quite a few.

I always will remember (at Dishforth ATC), Leeming ATC coming on the Landline and asking if we had a Cranwell JP on our runway. Looking up from our game of Uckers, (we were closed at the time), 'Oh yes we have' was the reply. 'Ah' said Leeming, 'He's asking for taxy instuctions'.

'No problem' replied our Master Signaller Local Controller 'Tell him to turn left from where he is, cross the Southbound A1, join the Northbound and taxy for about 11 miles, then recall for parking'.

It happened in Nairobi in the early 50's, a BOAC Constellation ended up at the then Nairobi West when it should have been at Eastleigh. Caused an amount of hilarity among the local population. Best bit was getting the passengers off as the tallest steps at Nairobi West were used with EAAC DC3s..........!!!

Planemike

Well at least one JP landed at Barkston in the late 80's with, somehow, the QFI thinking he was landing at Cranwell.......

To be fair said QFI was commendably honest, it had been a long hard week, and the QFI's (acting ) Flight Commander was suitably sympathetic :D :D

Are you here Shakey :ok:

More recently, City of Derry airport and Ballykelly - both 08/26 - Eirjet!

Taxydual,

We played Uckers ar (Watton) Eastern Radar also :)

Norwich (Horsham-St-Faith) vs Coltishall; probably started in the days of the Meteor, Hunter, etc, certainly with a Lightning, which probably was more exciting.

In the early 1980's a Qantas 747 successfully carried out a visual approach to Hughes airport instead of LAX. Go-around carried out and demotion for the crew if I remember rightly.

When I was at Lossiemouth there were rumours of a USAF F111 who was supposed to be in the (rain swept and misty) pattern for Lossie doing a roller at RAF Milltown (about 10 miles away) by mistake. Trouble was Milltown had been closed as a airfield for an awfully long time, so when said F111 landed at Lossiemouth about 20 minutes later (somehow) he had what was left of a barbed wire fence in the undercarriage. It could have just been a fairy story, but we laughed at the time.

I seem to recall a Sabena 737 once decided to take a tour of leafy Cheshire and duly headed for Woodford ( rather than MAN ).....but decided having had a look at the dump, that it wouldn't actually land there.

Summer of '76, a Hunter very nearly broke into the Withybush circuit instead of the Brawdy circuit......:uhoh:

Fortunately it was going fast enough for the pilot to tweak back on the control column and hit 2000ft before 2 miles, so no ATZ infringement.

Doubtless a nice blue note for the locals though - and no-one ever complained!

A birdseed into Singapore mistook airports. Probably early eighties.

Seletar instead of Changi or other way round. Either way the skipper of course carried the can - big time. He was bailed up by the press as he left the terminal.

'What are your intentions now, Captain?'

'Well I'd say it's a fair bet I'll be looking closely at a little farm in Devon I noticed up for sale last week.'

In 1953 a RAF Canberra in the England-NZ air race landed at the little town site Connellan Airways unsealed strip in Alice Springs instead of at the main airport six miles south. She just got off in a huge cloud of red dust.

And the US fast jet (F1-11?) that beat up Manchester Airport instead of doing a fly-by at the Woodford airshow.

That Pan Am 707 is well airborne in that photo and must have lifted off about halfway down the 5,500 ft runway. So, plenty of runway, no real drama and no real need to close the A40?

AVIACO landed a DC8 at Lagan Field years ago
 

Fortunatley it was an empty leg charter from the Canaries so there was only the crew on board. Captain had to deploy emergency braking after touching down on the disused and broken concrete runway with a big white X at the threshold! - remember the big red handle on the dashboard of the Diesel 8 - like a Mercedes hand brake?

Afterwards, in the de-briefing, he said that he had assumed that due to the war situation in Northern Ireland at the time, all the buidings were under camoflage - ditto for the lack of runway lighting!

In fairness, Lagan Field is on the same heading as Aldergrove - just a bit short of it. Unhappily, though there is a river at the end of the runway which he narrowly avoided. The RT between the landed DC-8 and the tower was hillarious - "Aviaco - we don't see you - which end of the runway are you at?" "The river end" "Aviaco - we don't have a river at the end of our runway" etc.

Undeterred, having established the error, he simply turned round and took off again and landed in Aldergrove - must have been quite a take off roll!

:=

In the unmissable thread on Gaining An R.A.F Pilot's Brevet In WWII in the Military Aircrew forum, the indomitable Regle tells an amusing tale in this vein at Post 509, viz:

http://www.pprune.org/military-aircr...t-ww11-17.html



Jack

I remember passing a JAL DC8 in our crew taxi from Bombay airport. It was in a ditch at the end of the runway at Juhu aerodrome looking very sorry for itself - a write-off. I think it was 1973. It had been a misty morning and they were guided in on radar at 500 ft and told to report runway in sight. Well they spotted the threshold markings at Juhu so landed not being able to see the end in the mist. They must have had a real shock when they did see the end as it was only about 4000ft max. I can't remember if there were any casualties. :ouch:

BA aircraft landed at Sharjah instead of Bahrain - I think it was in the 60s or early 70s.

1973, 4 FTS Valley. OC 2 Sqn tasked to deliver the Wright Jubilee Trophy to Shawbury. Trophy strapped into the back of his Gnat and off he whizzes to Shawbury. Being a steely-eyed Sqn Cdr, he bursts into the circuit and lands, having made all the requisite radio calls, though Shawbury ATC couldn't seem to see him. No surprise really, 'cos he had landed at Sleap, just up the road...

And a US ANG RF-4 on Ex Reforger sometime late 70s early 80s; his wingman broke off at a few hundred feet and continued on into Colt.

US carrier from the US to Frankfurt and landed at Brussels, not so many years ago.

All started off when Shanwick thought their dest was BRU. Not one of the operating crew (3) pick up the c**kup until late final approach BRU. They just carried on and landed.

The passengers knew as they had a view of the moving map.

An MEA crew approaching runway 34 centre at Jeddah in a strong westerly wind and a lot of sand in the air landed on the runway visually dead ahead of them, unfortunately it was 34 left. Even more unfortunately there was no taxiway joining this new runway to the rest of the airport :uhoh:.

Happens today, will happen again tomorrow. Most of them could be avoided by flying the iap, and a little crew discipline.

Two Strikemasters en-route to Oman (if memory serves) Fuel stopping Cyprus one landed Nicosia as planned other at disused Tymbo ( now Ercan) about 1972 73

My fading memory seems to recall a KLM DC 8 landing at Changi instead of Paya Lebar when I was stationed there in 69/70. Runway direction pretty much the same I remember.

Late 80's I was based at Aldergrove (NI). Northerly runway in use when a Dan Air landed at Langford Lodge with a full load of pax.

Then recently I think it was a B52, supposed to do a display at Farnborough and gave a great flypast at Blackbushe instead.

pjac
 

KLM, Qantas, BOAC and one or two others landed at Changhi rather than Payar Lebar-the previous mention by someone, of Seletar was in the days when Kalang was in use.

A certain company I used to work for landing at the military airport at Kano (I think) in Nigeria instead of the civil airport in a 747 Classic at night - To be fair, they were doing an NDB approach and on the turn inbound the power failed at the civil airport so it went completely black, whilst the military one stayed lit-up so they made a landing on the much shorter runway.
They quickly worked out it was the wrong airport because of the lack of runway and so turned around and got ready to takeoff again. While they were doing that the military woke up - not surprising with a large jet landing like that! - and hopped into jeeps & trucks to find out WTF was going on.
Just as they passed behind the 747, the crew gave it full power and blew over the jeep with the Colonel in it ..... Then on landing at the civil airport they blew most of the 16 main tyres from two big brake applications in a short period of time and so the plane was beached until they could fly in some more wheel assembys. Had to bribe the military with $$$ to keep them from making lots of complaints.

Closed if only to stop people running into the back of each other when they saw the plane, you know what spotters are like....

Mind you, it looks like they used a better burning coal supply for the engines, not too much of a smoke trail...

Seem to remember in 70's Aviaco DC9 landing Langford Lodge instead of Belfast Aldergrove.

Couple of years ago a whole Spanair scheduled service MD-80 flight from Madrid to Santiago, Northern Spain flew the opposite direction to Seville, Southern Spain, instead. Everyone on the commercial side thought it was going to Santiago, everyone on the operations side thought it was going to Seville. Aircraft had been sub-chartered in from FlyNordic, a Scandinavian charter operator, on a damp lease, with a non-Spanish speaking flight deck crew, so the Spanair cabin crew made all the normal announcements about Santiago to the passengers. Somewhere along the way between Spanair and FlyNordic ops the error was made.

Preceding flight had also been a round trip to Seville, crew just had it down in their paperwork they were doing a second one. Cloudy all the way so no passengers noticed an unusual direction ...... you can guess the rest. ATC had them down for Seville in the flight plan as advised by ops, which the crew flew, but when they arrived nobody at ground handling was expecting them.

BBC NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Probe into 'wrong runway' error

more recent, flight landed at Ballykelly airstrip instead of LDY

doesnt surprise me that it happens more than u'd think, the amount of air strips near commerical airports in N.I is quite high i think

Spectating at Duxford a few years ago on the morning of an Airshow, Bae146 of foreign airline appeared on finals. at about a mile, he realised that Cambridge Airport was off to his right, and altered course fairly smartly. Made the 'safety' column in 'Pilot' Magazine tho'

Tercarley,

It was a VC10 and they landed at Sharjah instead of Dubai.

They also turned it around, took off and landed at Dubai without a word about the intermediate landing?? A passenger apparently wrote in asking questions, or so the story went at the time. There was a discusion without tea and biscuits back at LHR.

Speedbird48