SWA lands at wrong airport.
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there is little doubt in my mind that aterpster knows what he is writing about. the exact regulations may have been tweeked over the years but the idea is that a pilot does have to familiarize himself with the route he will fly and the airports he will serve.
My jepp book is loaded with nice color photos of some airports, usually they are in mountains or on mesas and I am required to look at them. there is a bbriefing page which tells me the wx is a continental climate and to watch out for deer on the runway and birds at the garbage dump.
When I started with my airline, it was largely flying on the east coast of the USA. I had learned to fly and done my time in regionals on the west coast. Ask me how to go to Lake Tahoe, no problem. But I had never been to Indianapolis in my life.
So I always used everything for those first flights into new to me airports. Visual orientation to landmarks, LOMs, VOR, asking ATC Radar for point outs etc.
One of my first flights as copilot the captain and I were going to IND and he kept yelling at me, "the reaking airport is over there, you don't need the ILS". I insisted. He , who had been flying there for decades, had the wrong airport insight (at night). So we did the ILS and landed at the right airport.
To his credit, the next day he bought me breakfast and apologized. We got along fine after that.
YOU ARE NEVER TOO GOOD TO ALWAYS BE SURE. I even check my gear on short final at least three times. Same with flaps for takeoff.
My jepp book is loaded with nice color photos of some airports, usually they are in mountains or on mesas and I am required to look at them. there is a bbriefing page which tells me the wx is a continental climate and to watch out for deer on the runway and birds at the garbage dump.
When I started with my airline, it was largely flying on the east coast of the USA. I had learned to fly and done my time in regionals on the west coast. Ask me how to go to Lake Tahoe, no problem. But I had never been to Indianapolis in my life.
So I always used everything for those first flights into new to me airports. Visual orientation to landmarks, LOMs, VOR, asking ATC Radar for point outs etc.
One of my first flights as copilot the captain and I were going to IND and he kept yelling at me, "the reaking airport is over there, you don't need the ILS". I insisted. He , who had been flying there for decades, had the wrong airport insight (at night). So we did the ILS and landed at the right airport.
To his credit, the next day he bought me breakfast and apologized. We got along fine after that.
YOU ARE NEVER TOO GOOD TO ALWAYS BE SURE. I even check my gear on short final at least three times. Same with flaps for takeoff.
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I always try to follow procedure but my close final check was gear, flaps and speed brake armed. Landing at MIA with FO flying I did that check and speed brake was not armed. I looked over at our mechanical checklist and nothing had been done so in the last 200 feet completed it during the flare without distracting the FO. Complacency can creep up on you very easily when you feel too comfortable.
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I made my share of mistakes but they were caught by good CRM.
Landing at the wrong airport wasn't one of them. I was fortunate to get through the flying part of my career with no violations or incidents. Perhaps that was a lot of luck or perhaps a little bit of luck combined with adherence to SOPs.
If an airline pilots uses all the tools he is supposed to use he/she simply will not land at the wrong airport.
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lifeafteraviation. I don't think aterpster is being arrogant. I think he is talking about his life in aviation.
I do wonder about you. Following the rules and SOPs and (AND THIS IS THE IMPORTANT ONE) using good judgement does get you through pretty safely in this business.
The best regulation in the USA is the FAA regulation which allows the pilot in command to deviate from the regulations to keep things safe. I could quote it exactly but it exists in different forms in different sections of the regs.
Aterpster knows quite a bit about instrument approaches . He also hails from TWA. I remember coming back from a TWA inteview about 30 years ago. A deadheading pilot for TWA and I had a nice conversation about flying. He was a total gentleman and we spoke of how he got called into the chief pilot's office for approaching KPHL at Vref plus 25 in the new 767s and was automatically reported. The landing was fine, but SOP said he should have diverted. They went on to talk about how TWA had issued all of its pilots, the davies book. And that the book was how TWA flew.
I have great respect for the TWA boys, at least in the early years.
They, like many pilots, have been screwed over.
But that aterpster is here, chatting with us is a plus.
LIFEafteraviation: Did something bad happen to you? Did you land at the wrong place? Or didn't judge the wx right?
I do wonder about you. Following the rules and SOPs and (AND THIS IS THE IMPORTANT ONE) using good judgement does get you through pretty safely in this business.
The best regulation in the USA is the FAA regulation which allows the pilot in command to deviate from the regulations to keep things safe. I could quote it exactly but it exists in different forms in different sections of the regs.
Aterpster knows quite a bit about instrument approaches . He also hails from TWA. I remember coming back from a TWA inteview about 30 years ago. A deadheading pilot for TWA and I had a nice conversation about flying. He was a total gentleman and we spoke of how he got called into the chief pilot's office for approaching KPHL at Vref plus 25 in the new 767s and was automatically reported. The landing was fine, but SOP said he should have diverted. They went on to talk about how TWA had issued all of its pilots, the davies book. And that the book was how TWA flew.
I have great respect for the TWA boys, at least in the early years.
They, like many pilots, have been screwed over.
But that aterpster is here, chatting with us is a plus.
LIFEafteraviation: Did something bad happen to you? Did you land at the wrong place? Or didn't judge the wx right?
“What these folks did is inexcusable. …”
The danger in this line of thought – closing the event by allocating blame, fault, error, etc, is that it fails to seek a deeper understanding of the behaviour and thus misses an opportunity to learn, perhaps enabling avoidance of a future incident.
Continuing the investigation beyond error does not imply unaccountability; we are always accountable for our actions, but actions are more often shaped by the circumstances of the operation including training, experience, and guidelines.
Rules or SOPs do not create safety – people do; how do you specify not to land at the wrong airport, or only land at the intended airport? In many instances the SOP rote is eroding the human ability to be flexible, and to adapt to changing situations and increasing pressures in operation.
Cut the guys some slack; consider how pilots with great regularity manage to land at the intended airport; how do they do that, how do you differentiate between what is intended when it is the correct airport, or intended at the wrong airport?
What is good judgement – or conversely bad judgement; only the outcome might tell. If only we could see the outcome before taking action.
The danger in this line of thought – closing the event by allocating blame, fault, error, etc, is that it fails to seek a deeper understanding of the behaviour and thus misses an opportunity to learn, perhaps enabling avoidance of a future incident.
Continuing the investigation beyond error does not imply unaccountability; we are always accountable for our actions, but actions are more often shaped by the circumstances of the operation including training, experience, and guidelines.
Rules or SOPs do not create safety – people do; how do you specify not to land at the wrong airport, or only land at the intended airport? In many instances the SOP rote is eroding the human ability to be flexible, and to adapt to changing situations and increasing pressures in operation.
Cut the guys some slack; consider how pilots with great regularity manage to land at the intended airport; how do they do that, how do you differentiate between what is intended when it is the correct airport, or intended at the wrong airport?
What is good judgement – or conversely bad judgement; only the outcome might tell. If only we could see the outcome before taking action.
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Aterpster is saying following the rules, using good judgement and some luck can get you through a career with no bent metal, no violations and no injured pax.
I was lucky enough to do the same but do not put pilots down that were not as fortunate.
I was lucky enough to do the same but do not put pilots down that were not as fortunate.
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What is good judgement – or conversely bad judgement; only the outcome might tell. If only we could see the outcome before taking action.
When guys like Aterpster just hang the guys who make mistakes and assume they are simply better than that they do no service to themselves or other pilots. This sounds more like professional resentment rather than professional assessment. I see what this is really about now. So TWA pilots got a raw deal...a lot of us did.
And yes...he is being arrogant. I don't know those other guys he was slamming, I just thought it was inappropriate.
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Every crash or incident in my flying career I read about I thought what would have prevented me doing the same thing. I was fortunate to not have others learn from what happened to our flight. I hope others do the same.
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Alf
“What these folks did is inexcusable. …”
The danger in this line of thought – closing the event by allocating blame, fault, error, etc, is that it fails to seek a deeper understanding of the behaviour and thus misses an opportunity to learn, perhaps enabling avoidance of a future incident.
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Perhaps "learning" has already occured by most pilots.
Do you think a couple weeks back these guys thought there was any chance they could ever do such a thing?
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I am an Airbus pilot and know little about the flight deck layout on various 737 models.
Did they have EFIS? If so, would they have entered the STAR legs and arrival runway in the FMC? If so, would they then ignore this info during a visual approach?
Regards
Did they have EFIS? If so, would they have entered the STAR legs and arrival runway in the FMC? If so, would they then ignore this info during a visual approach?
Regards
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Safety is a ..... what?
I liked what Alf wrote in 253. It helped my thought process on this 'event' so that it reached two separate, but related, points. (1) Transport category aircraft aviators are highly reluctant to say, out loud, and especially outside of their own community, that one of their brethren screwed up. It's just plain not done that way. Screws-ups can be perceived, but not called-out and - sheesh! - certainly not amongst the general populace. Yes, sometimes a few words of scorn slip out (especially on a relatively obscure internet board), but culturally and attitudinally...you get my point. (2) Even where an aviator either screwed up - whether as a major or minor factor - there is OBVIOUSLY a need to unpack, disassemble, dissect, unravel, and just plain drill, drill, drill the event in question to find out exactly what took place. The fed regs cover the entire system (obviously) and there are many ways that variability between and among airports can equate to a situation where compliance with those regs was simply not enough. And: -- stuff changes. A perhaps 'not great' but hopefully pertinent example can be found in the posts about trees being cut down or trimmed in the context of the UPS crash at Birmingham. Seemed like the Joburg wing-clip posts touched on airside changes. Granted these are airport specific. But still illuminate the point that as the overall airport and airway system lurches, belches and coughs along its path of change, it is UNSAFE to rely on the FARs - or certificate holders' SOPs and flight manuals, as the ultimate. The ultimate yardstick in safety assurance, I mean. Respectfully, WillowRun 6-3.
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If you have all the magic stuff, use it. We didn't so had no problems. Just pay attention because landing at the right airport is quite easy. Complacency
can easily cause incidents like this.
can easily cause incidents like this.
Exactly, I've said this a few times before in this and other similar threads but if they had bothered to look down at their Map display it would have shown them...................yes a MAP. ( assuming the dopes hadn't deleted the correct RWY from the FMC Legs page, which is quite frankly possible )
No excuses, retrain those Pilots but first change the culture in SWA that allowed this most basic of errors to occur in the first place.
No excuses, retrain those Pilots but first change the culture in SWA that allowed this most basic of errors to occur in the first place.
Did they have EFIS? If so, would they have entered the STAR legs and arrival runway in the FMC? If so, would they then ignore this info during a visual approach?
RNAV or ILS approaches, yes. But no STAR.
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The company culture at SWA, contrary to their claims, would appear to be hurry,hurry,hurry.....if you ever operated at one of their hubs, it's downright rude and sometimes hazardous....hence a visual approach at night in unfamiliar territory...hurry to the wrong airport...
Thread Starter
I'm based at a SWA hub, Denver. I commute on them frequently to/from work. A night visual approach two guys gooned up is not an indictment on the whole company and its procedures. If it was, they'd be landing at the wrong airport on a regular basis.
Find me a major airline that hasn't screwed the pooch despite procedures in place. If this was happening on a frequent basis you might have a leg to stand on, but it isn't.
Start with statistical evidence and not casual observations to make your point.
Find me a major airline that hasn't screwed the pooch despite procedures in place. If this was happening on a frequent basis you might have a leg to stand on, but it isn't.
Start with statistical evidence and not casual observations to make your point.