C17 Lands at wrong (3600 foot!) runway
 

Interesting situation here:

Air Force cargo plane lands at Davis Islands airport | TBO.com

Can't believe how quickly he brought it to a stop!

Craziest thing I've ever seen. C-17 lands at wrong airport. Not an airbase. #Tampa #MacDill #Screwedpilots

What on earth was the nav doi... ah! 2-person flight deck. That figures.

Good demo of short field capability though! ;)

-RP

"Good demo of short field capability though! "


That's what I was thinking.

I bet a few of the pilot's muscles tightened when he realized
how short the runway actually was !

Wanted: 95 feet of runway for military cargo plane parked on Davis Islands - Tampa Bay Times
""This is the second time this has happened," said spectator Gary Garrett, 71, who has a real estate office on Davis Islands.
"The last time, it was a 727 in the 80s," he recalled, "and they took that plane apart to get it out of here."

Photos here
Giant military cargo plane lands at small Tampa airport

OH....to have a copy of the CVR tape......that would make for some interesting listening.....particularly after they got it stopped and the magnitude of what they had just done to their careers sunk in!:E

You could come up with some great captions for the third photo in this set
(the Air force person talking to the civvy scratching his head or on the phone !)

Giant military cargo plane lands at small Tampa airport

Sorry but the phrase 'f*cking idiots' springs to mind......how? :ugh:

Willard
 

So I presume no navigator equipped aircraft has ever landed at the wrong airfield?!
BV;)

Classic marginal weather - 9999 and 1CU at 5,000 sucked them right in...

From the airnav website, in KTPF's 'Additional Comments' section:

:}

Now, about that pavement concession .....

They should be grateful that it wasn't an Antonov!

Now departed again! Follow the link in the first post to see an impressive short field PABTO take-off! I bet V1 came up really quickly and rotate seemed like an eternity!

There are some axminster-shuffles and interviews without coffee going on at McGuire.

They probably spent just enough time discussing it while parked on the runway with recorders running to overwrite the good stuff :E

I gotta give them credit though for the lessons learned and I bet they wont do it again if given the chance

A few decades ago, there were several occasions when inadvertent landings occurred at RAF Changi instead at Paya Lebar, the old civil airport in Singapore. Red faces not caused by tropic sun.

Surprised that no photos seen of the rubber on the runway...

The reports are saying there were 19 crewmembers! :ooh:

I thought the C-17 only needed two pilots and a loadmaster.

I wonder if fatigue at the end of a long flight caused a non-sterile cockpit environment.

I hope the pilots, especially the AC, have powerful sponsors.

I wonder what approach they flying. The ILS and TACAN approaches to Rwy 22 contain the note:

WARNING: Use extreme caution PETER O. KNIGHT arpt 4 NM NE of MACDILL AFB

I saw written somewhere in one of the articles that the C17 weighed
some huge amount (400,000 lbs ?) yet the airport runway was
only rated for a number way way less than this (20,000 lbs ?).
Hopefully not the media getting the numbers wrong.

With such a huge difference, how come no damage was done to the runway ?

Reason for asking is I once saw what happens when a C130 sinks through
the asphalt / tarmac on landing at an airstrip rated for Hercs but that had obviously not been checked in a while. Not sure what happened on take off
as never went back as it was in the middle of no where (Woomera Rocket Range).

Thanks.

Not one with me navigating.

McDill is on the South East corner of a peninsular and Peter O Knight is on the south east corner of peninsular. The GPS says you are on the centre line so it is easy to make the mistake.

A C17 bringing a bomb disposal team landed at Henderson field in the Solomon Islands. The parked the nose against the end of the ramp and shut down.
"Can we have a tug to push the aircraft back, please?"
"What tug?"

Washington would not allow them to pushback using reverse thrust so they had to wait three days until another C17 brought a tug all the way from Hawaii.

Whilst it was there it was the largest man made structure in the Solomons.

Good advert for the C17 I would have thought

:}

MG:
Ah memories, "Downwind to roll" "Proceed to finals you are number one...correction, now number two". Sure enough BOAC VC10, having called visual and cleared to land by PL, hoves into view on finals for 20 Changi (same R/W direction as PL). It pours on the coals but not before it has briefly touched down. Result, as you say, red faces and a landing fee from the MOD!

Several moons ago a Civi Tristar i think it was diverted into EGNX and the pax had to wait on board for a few hours while a set of Airstairs were driven over from Birmingham that could reach the door :p

Bob Viking
 

Yes, one of our 48Sqn Hercs landed at a disused strip in Oz; they were inbound to Woomera and landed at a place slightly further north, Evett's Field IIRC.

The captain,who was quite an arrogant sort of chap (RIP), took ages to live it down.

As there was b8gger all between Darwin and Adelaide, apart from the GAFA (great australian f*ck all),not a complete surprise.

It wasn't me I hasn't to add ,and as the nav is also no longer with us, I will refrain from naming him. The co might still be around,can't remember who it was!

Surprised that no photos seen of the rubber on the runway....

...... complete with brown skidmarks?:eek:

Jack

Takeoff

Video take a few minutes to load

Raw Video: Air Force cargo plane takes off | TBO.com

Ryanair landing at Ballykelly
Easyjet pretty close to landing at Military Field in Sicily
plus numerous other ones

No sure what issue is really as its a great landing as plane is usable again.....

Lufthansa seemed to be the main culprits at Changi. They had to pay landing charges but their takeoffs were free.
Another Lufthansa landing site was Langford Lodge near Aldergrove.

Northolt was another military runway parallel to a nearby major civil airport visited by wayward airliners. The gasometer on the approach was then painted with the letters NO which says it all, however it's interpreted:-
Boeing 707-321, N725PA, Pan American World Airways (PA / PAA)

Short field?
 

Does anyone here remember when an old piston Guppy turned up at ABZ to carry a Chinook across to the US? We stood up near the compass bay, jaws agape. It didn't rotate per se - they lifted the gear and trundled along in ground effect. Some miles away and turning left it was still less height than Kirkhill which is 900ft. Cast iron clapper valves those guys.

Gary Numan, remember him... On his round the world flight many years ago spent his first fuel stop locked in the Guardroom at RAF Odiham, instead of having a quick stop at Lasham where he should have been, didn't bode well for the rest of the trip.

"Whilst it was there it was the largest man made structure in the Solomons."


I'll take you to at least 50 bigger :hmm:



hint: not all of them are afloat still

Alitalia DC-8's have been known to try a landing at Cacina Costa (Agusta Helicopters) instead of Milan Malpensa just across a small ridge to the south. One may have succeeded as I recall.

One is perhaps 4,000 feet long with some factory buildings on one side....the other is a huge airport with an 11,000 foot runway.....and lots and lots of big airliners sat all over the place.

They will all be rusting away at the bottom of (aptley named) Ironbottom Sound.

Hmm, a certain ex-Lyneham Staish announcing that the next person to land at the strong airfield would be 'E' cat'd. How we laughed shortly afterwards.....

Well, I've been in the back of a RAF herc that very nearly did the same at Rome, so I guess it's not only possible but happens a lot more than we mortals realise.

Sincerely hope that the short ferry wasn't the pilots last C-17 flight.

News report says it was a different crew who took the plane back to Mac Dill,
hope first crew dont get in to much trouble.
What makes it worse i suppose is the fact we live in a digital age where every thing is basicly on the web before they even switched the engines off!!!!!!!!

That 707 landing at Northolt was in the era when they carried navigators for the transatlantic trips. And I know of at least 2 occasions on which Tornados have landed at the wrong airfield despite (or perhaps because of) the best efforts of the nav!

Back in the late '60s, RAF Sharjah and Dubai had parallel runways (12/30?) and generally used the same r/w direction with a change to 30 when the sea-breeze 'kicked-in. In the summer, the vis was never very good at low-level and each airfield could only offer VOR/NDB apps. As it happened, one day Sharjah had changed to 30 and we are coming off the VOR at about 300 feet happily looking beyond our threshold towards the far end of the R/W when out of the haze appears a PIA Trident who believed he was coming off the VOR for 12 at Dubai and happily heading for the threshold! A genuine 'brown-trouser' moment!
Some 4 years later, I am in ops at RAF Changi when the roar of thrust reversers shake me out of a light slumber. Oh dear, it was an SAS DC8 on R/W 02 who had made the error of thinking it was Paya Lebar.

Here's another report covering the aircraft's departure.

Cause of surprise landing at Davis Islands airport unclear | TBO.com

Listen to the commentary at about 02.08. :ugh: