Commercial Pilot Lands at Wrong Field
 

Puzzles me. When they talk to ATC doesn't he smell a rat.:confused:

The airfields are almost 15 km apart. Quite a large error. Apparently it is not the first time for these two fields either.

I wonder what happens to the pilot? If he is a senator he should get off lightly.:E

This has happened many many times. Airlines typically require approach aids be used even for visuals to runways served by an IAP. Airplanes with GPS/FMS capability don't even need that for runway or airport ID. I can't explain why this keeps happening.

Amounts to seeing what one expects to see - especially at night. Expecting airport lights, some runway lights appear....

I was in San Juan when a 737 inbound for TJSJ saw the lights of TJIG (the smaller GA airport) right under his nose (but ~8 miles closer) and landed there by mistake. Both have lagoons on short final - runways are 9-27 for TJIG and 8-26 or 10-28 for TJSJ - so again, he saw what he expected to see.

One just has to be willing to always question the obvious and double-check everything (with ATC, GPS, any other information around).

Well, if you listen to all the cognoscenti in the umpteen AF447 threads it happens due to the lack of experience hand flying. That's also the position of the FAA and BEA and Boeing and Airbus.

I'm sure that if pilots would just get rid of their automation dependency, turn all the electronics off, and just fly the plane by good old fashioned 20-20 eyesight this type of incident would never ever happen.

Err......I think most of the landings at wrong airfields were done by self proclaimed " visual by the seat of the pants " hand flying aces!

I had one old former USAF manual flying ace making a visual approach into PGUA twice instead of PGUM! When I pointed those out to him, I had some really creative excuses! No word of thanks, no acknowledgement but really creative excuses and a grumbly demeanor throughout the next few days we were paired together.

Almost as bad as the RYR pilot who landed on a taxiway a few years back.

Or the one who landed at the wrong Derry airport...at least they all walked away

MountainBear & Babablackship:

Somehow I don't think automation over dependence or lack hand flying skills have much to do with landing at the wrong airport! := It seems that you both have some axe to grind regarding these two issues? Well that other thread is still there and available for you to provide your opinions...

And by the way, visual approaches are a vital ATC capacity tool as well as saving considerable fuel and flight time when conditions permit. 2 minutes here, 3 minutes there, pretty soon you're talkin' real money! Actually in KLAS and a few other places, the time saved can be much more.

pattern_is_full:
I'll buy the expectation error argument as a contributing factor though. Good call. It at least aligns with my own experiences. What puzzles me is why a pilot doesn't verify what they think they know when there are readily available means of verification at their fingertips. Do they also accept that the gear is down and locked simply because the handle is down? I would presume that at least one of them usually looks at the indicators before believing that. Same thing for most flying tasks I'd say. Crosscheck and verify. So what is it? Distraction? Overconfidence? Sloppy attitude toward flying? All of the preceding and more?

Hey I realized pretty early in flying that I'm pretty good but not perfect! Even my own hard bitten and suspicious nature has temporarily failed me on occasion. I've been tempted by the wrong airport or runway quite a few times. But only very briefly until the "hey that don't seem right" moment that results from crosschecking. And all those taxiways that look better from the air than the runway! KSEA had a bunch of oopsies there. KLAS too. Big Xs and serpentine taxiway center lines seem to help somewhat. Yeah even though I love to hand fly visuals, tuning an ILS or loading a GPS approach seems like cheap insurance to me.

And what about the other guy sitting along side? Man or mouse, squeak up! Take part in the process! Even though it might not be your turn to fly, be a pilot, a good PNF. So there's all these opportunities to trap errors like landing at the wrong airport, yet it still continues to happen. If nothing else maybe it serves to inspire everyone else to be a little more aware. Maybe they crosscheck even if they're a little tired and don't think it's strictly necessary. I sure hope so.

Pattern is full:
Amounts to seeing what one expects to see - especially at night. Expecting airport lights, some runway lights appear....

I was in San Juan when a 737 inbound for TJSJ saw the lights of TJIG (the smaller GA airport) right under his nose (but ~8 miles closer) and landed there by mistake. Both have lagoons on short final - runways are 9-27 for TJIG and 8-26 or 10-28 for TJSJ - so again, he saw what he expected to see.


Do you remember what year and which airline?

It sounds worse than it actually was...but still bad

That's right Ryan, many airfields have disused runways as taxiways, although it sounds impossible to do it does happen, many airfield briefs have information regarding locations of nearby disused airfields, new runways under construction, etc....all help to improve situational awareness....

however, as has been alluded to in previous posts, its a team in the flight deck, if something doesn't look right it probably isn't, i'd rather say something and it turns out my fears were unfounded than say nothing at all and let things go horribly wrong....

never say never, it can always happen to you no matter how good you think you are

Yes, if they (and you) have ILS, NDB, anything; even on a visual approach, tune it and crosscheck..

Colleague mentioned flying an air taxi in to Lossiemouth.
Given a radar descent and released downwind for a visual circuit.
Looked right and there was the runway.
Called Tower downwind and finals - cleared to land - easy.
Landed, cleared - and noticed - lots of Nimrods! Oh buggah! he thought.
SO - continued back down taxiway, had a bloody good look around, and took off again with a right turn to continue downwind at the REAL Lossie.
Lossie knew what had happened, Kinloss knew what had happened, he knew what had happened and it was tacitly agreed that it would not be spoken of.

Were there any clues? Yes, of course there were! One r/w was 23 and the other 26 for a start but, as you've said already, he was suckered into seeing what he expected to see.

I used to fly for a corporation whose 'former chief pilot'* not only landed at the wrong airport, but in fact overflew the airport of intended landing, which was on the mainland and landed on an island airport just off the coast. They were supposed to land at Cancun, Mexico but instead landed on the island of Cozumel. Admittedly it was at night, but it was a clear night and the owner of the aircraft and the other passengers all realized he had overflown Cancun. But the 'former chief pilot' paid no attention to their objections.



* Shortly after that, I was the chief pilot of the company.

Bloody hell Con, how did he manage that? Those 2 places look just about as dissimilar as you can get :ooh:
What a dullard:}

Wrong Airfield

From Memoirs
The students at ETPS without former jet experience and from countries using a different language than English had assimilation difficulties which the rest of us rapidly came to recognise. We did our best to help compensate by many fascinating discussions on flying, English social customs and behaviour.

Major Franki Frankini from Italy had an unusual background in that he had been a wartime fighter pilot with combat experience. Discussions revealed that he had actually flown a mission in which one of our tutors had been one of his adversaries in a dogfight. He also graphically described an occasion when he manoeuvred on to the tail of a Mustang and "I shoot and I shoot all my bullets into the Mustang and it just fly away." Later, following Italy's capitulation, Franki volunteered to fly Mustangs with the Allies against the Germans. So here was a fighter pilot who flew on both sides during World War II.

Confusion often occurred with air traffic control instructions despite the care taken by the controllers to use standard words and phrases with clear English diction.

It was not uncommon for pilots to mistake Blackbush, the civil airfield 10 miles from Farnborough, for home base. I found myself doing an initial approach on Blackbush one misty afternoon. I soon recognised my error as the layout of the airfield became clear. Not so with the Egyptian, Vickery Zarr, He followed through to land and when he went to turn off the runway on to a taxiway with which he was familiar at Farnborough, the resultant radio chatter became really hilarious.

It was normal practice under these circumstances for Farnborough to retain control over the offending pilot whilst liaising with Blackbush over a telephone tie-line. So those of us on the same frequency became party to a fascinating sequence of instructions and responses.

Blackbush was base to a fleet of civil Ambassador type aircraft and it became obvious that one of these was preparing for take off at the holding point when Farnborough said to Vickery " Take the next runway exit left and then the taxiway back to the holding point." Vickery said " I do not understand where I am and what I should do. I have some fuel left and can fly again for 20 minutes." Farnborough came back with "Roger, taxi straight ahead to the Ambassador." Vickery did not respond so Farnborough repeated the instruction. Vickery then came back in a faltering voice with "Please, please, I do not er er I do not wish to see the Ambassador today."

One of the tutors on the radio broke in with " Vickery you idiot, he means the Ambassador aircraft waiting for take off at the holding point." Meanwhile the rest of us had convulsions of laughter at the expense of the hapless and confused Egyptian.

We Australians were sometimes confused by different meanings given to words. The RAE were experimenting with a rapidly configurable inflatable aircraft capable of being carried around on a light road vehicle. The wings were inflatable and normally folded into a container. The engine was fitted with a small air compressor which inflated the wings and fuselage to maintain form and strength of its delta shape. Some intrepid test pilot would occasionally take it for a flight. The craft was always referred to by the British as the Durex Delta. This to us conceptualised a delta aircraft held together by Durex brand transparent sticky tape as marketed in Australia at the time. But the British did not have Durex sticky tape. Their Durex was a brand of condom.

I soon learned about this when my comments in mixed company one evening about having seen the Durex delta flying that day were followed by someone repeatedly kicking me in the shins beneath the table.

Flying in the northern hemisphere often puzzled me as I found I was less able to instinctively know where north should be. I had to take extra care to refresh my orientation with the compass. To this day I am unable to specify the basis for having some in-built directional capacity whilst in the southern hemisphere.

I guess the the term visual approach backed up by navaids really does not mean what it's supposed to... does it:=. Oh well.:(

My favorite visual approach aid is the gasometer with LH and an arrow on pointing to Heathrow to stop the numbers of people who saw Northolt and tried to land there. And a Pan Am 707 succeeded.

A Navy Wessex pilot of my aquaintance landed by night and asked ATC for taxy instructions. ATC said they couldn't see him asked where he was. He said he was near the big airliners.

ATC told him to take off again and taxi 5 nm NE, from Lasham to where he should be, at RAF Odiham.