Particularly inexcusable with today's array of gizmos in the cockpit.

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.

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.

That's a ridiculous statement. Mistakes are made every flight and are caught by good CRM and other built in redundancies designed into the system. That's how it all works.

The vast majority of airline pilots get through their career without violations or incidents. None of us make it through without making serious errors that had the potential to have ended badly. Call it luck or call it a result of a carefully designed system of redundancy that keeps us safe. In most cases it's a combination of both.

You are a fool if you believe you are infallible simply because you follow rules. Why are the rules constantly changing and evolving? It's because the rules themselves are always flawed but it takes time and experience to iron out the wrinkles. Usually that experience is earned by yours or other's mistakes. You are arrogant because you think you are above that.

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?

“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.

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 like this....it sums it up nicely. The outcome can't be seen ahead of time but what sets us apart is our ability to learn from the outcome of others...figure out how it happened, and learn to recognize when we are in a similar situation so we can avoid repeating the things that led to the error.

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.

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.

Perhaps "learning" has already occured by most pilots. How many learning opportunities does a pilot have to observe before breaking the code with a panel full of navigation gizmos, a pocket full of licenses and decades of experience on how not to land at the wrong airport?

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Anyone who believes they already know enough not to make such a mistake is dangerous. It's pure arrogance.

Do you think a couple weeks back these guys thought there was any chance they could ever do such a thing?

Its hard enough to comprehend this without trying to get in their heads a couple weeks back.

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

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.

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.

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.:ok:

As previously mentioned - there is NO STAR for either of the airports involved.

RNAV or ILS approaches, yes. But no STAR.

Two guys land at the wrong airport and it's a culture issue?

That's a stretch to connect the dots.

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...

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.

With modern technology available today I still cannot understand how an aircraft with more than 100 live and breathing people can miss a landing target by 7 miles.
This is not the length of a football field mind you, but rather the width of a medium sized city.
Are the navigational systems available on the flight deck really that bad or that inaccurate?
Or is it that they are simply ignored?

Yes. Ignored.

Really? Because two so called experienced Pilots land their EFIS GPS equipped modern 737NG with two lovely big ND's at the wrong Airport. They must not have been trained to look at the Map during approaches ( visual or Instrument ) or to update and maintain the FMC.

Unacceptable.

SWA train and maintain their standards so they must also take responsibility for the error. They should be trained to update the Legs page to ensure it reflects what they are doing ( within reason, I'm not expecting waypoint building to design a visual approach ) and trained to expect their landing runway to be in front of them on the ND during approach!!

As I've said before even on a visual approach ( yes we still do quite a few all over the World ) we still have the approach ( ILS/RNAV/VOR ) selected so we get:-

1/ a missed approach in the box, yes it may not be the one ATC want you to fly off a visual but it's a start.
2/ distance to run
3/ electronic path info from the VNAV. ( depending on app selected and a/c type )
4/ SITUATIONAL AWARENESS.

This is what I mean by Airline Culture. They obviously aren't training their crews to do this most basic of Airmanship stuff.

They obviously looked out the window and ignored the FMC. They probably didn't have a runway selected in the first place!!

Most basic of mistakes.

No excuses I'm afraid, if an Airline allows crews to make this mistake then obviously something is missing........:(

The culture and mistake (error) based analyses in many posts might represent frustration of being unable to understand the factors contributing the incident, and therefore limiting opportunity to learn. It is unlikely that the precise aspects will be discoverable (not to exclude culture, etc); however, with some well-reasoned speculative analysis it might be possible to identify important ‘learning’ factors.

A contribution to this type of incident could be a ‘mental map-slip’. This is not a loss of positional awareness, just the wrong one, which neither pilot realised. So what else were they doing – mental focus, procedures, radio calls, checks, etc.
Technology is seen as a major benefit – EFIS map, but are the pitfalls and traps in this equipment identified, reported, or just glossed over – ‘it happen to me, a minor slip, it won’t happen again’ – weak safety reporting / dissemination. With EFIS map selected, was the range scale dictated by WXR or a Terrain display – marvellous aids to safety, but the scale might be inappropriate for the airfield position – it appears (mentally perceived) to be closer than it is; have we done this, and with visual confirmation bias to reinforce the positional picture, continue with the approach; - or we able to detect the ‘oversight’ in time, if so how.

Some forward thinking views on human behaviour; for both them and us.
“If we can understand how the participants’ knowledge, mindset, and goals guided their behavior, then we can see how they were vulnerable to breakdown given the demands of the situation they faced.”
“Typically hindsight bias makes it seem that participants failed to account for information or conditions that “should have been obvious” or behaved in ways that were inconsistent with the (now known to be) significant information. Possessing knowledge of the outcome, because of the hindsight bias, trivializes the situation confronting the practitioner and makes the “correct” choice seem crystal clear.”
“… the use of the term “error” is less revealing about the performance of workers than it is about ourselves as evaluators.”
“Fallibility has no bounds in a universe of multiple pressures, uncertainty, and finite resources.”

Nitpicker

Do you even know what guidance SWA gives it crews with regard to visual approaches? If you're pointing your finger at the airline minus that knowledge, your speaking from a point of ignorance.

The airline provided them all the latest in terms of awareness, they obviously cocked it

Doesn't cost a thing to anonymously piss on SWA. A lot tougher however to provide a factual, data driven report on their guilt.

This is an absolutely insane and ignorant thing to say....I don't even need to explain why. Clearly you typed this out purely on an emotional charge.

Of course the airline will take responsibility for the error, that's what any airline would and should do. The pilots will take responsibility also. But to assume these guys weren't already thoroughly trained not to do this is just silly. We're all thoroughly trained not to crash but it sometimes happens unfortunately. I could very well happen to you nitpicker if you continue with this line of thinking ("oh I've been trained not to land at the wrong airport unlike SWA pilots so it can't happen to me")

This is exactly what you said....basic airmanship stuff. Of course they're being trained to do this and I can't imagine it's not part of their SOP...everybody should do this and pretty much everybody does. If these guys didn't do it in this instance it's their fault and they'll get punished...until you know...stop making wild ridiculous allegations. It's very likely they did everything right setting up for the approach and just plain old had a brain fart.

Yes it was...the only part of this post that is really making any sense.

I'll tell you what, let's put out a memo not to land at the wrong airport...that'll fix it...never happen again! why didn't they think of this earlier?

Imagine how we found airports in days of yore without GPS or RNAV for that matter.

Can't blame it on the avionics either:=. Like other carriers around the planet, doesn't Southwest require is crews to back up visual approaches with all available NAV aids along with the use the FMC for a proper profile and crosschecking? Boeing FCOM recommends it.

How about altimeter cross checks during final... KBBG 1302' KPLK 940'. Why didn't the crew did not find it strange when passing 1,100' to find no pavement?:ugh: How about the airport layout? The airport diagrams are different in all respects?

Wait... there's more! How's about setting up a 5 mile point from the end of the runway with a 3 degree glide for vertical guidance:eek:?

My perception is that SWA do have a culture issue. They have had several runway excursions due to poor approach profiles or landing on inappropriate runways (including due to weather issues), have recently crashed one in NY and now this. It suggests a combination of rushing and complacency. Fior what it's worth, they're not the only company I suspect this of, including some closer to home.

Oh, and Willowrun, you can keep your accusations of professional brethren closing ranks for your own profession - there are plenty of pilots making criticisms here, but try and find a lawyer to sue another...

@lifeafteraviation
 

Nice post!

I second that. Never going to say there isn't room for improvement from a SOP/ procedures perspective, but no matter how ironclad, well thought out the procedure, if the crew chooses not to apply it...

Well as a Pilot that has managed to fly all over the globe in narrow and wide body types for 25 years and NEVER ONCE tried to land on the wrong Airport I can honestly give my opinion and say the Pilots AND SWA were negligent by not making use of all available tools at their disposal to safely conduct the flight to the correct destination. A to B is all they had to do, nothing more nothing less.
The tools are available to use in the cockpit nicely fitted by Boeing.
You're saying they probably did update the FMC, use the ND as per SWA SOP's? Well if they did how could they miss their destination by 7 bloody miles?????? What.............they thought it map shift or something????:D


So you can make all the BS excuses you want but if the truth hurts then so be it.

Oh and it wouldn't be just SWA, I would say the same thing about a similar error if it were to occur in my company.

Fortunately no one was hurt and the Aircraft returned to service ok. Let's just all learn from their mistake and make sure we all have strategies in place to prevent it happening to us.:ok:

The SWA guys don't get paid by the hour, they get paid by the mile, hence the rush rush culture. See them slamming the fluffs down at LAX all the time, not making the first reverse high speed is a sin, apparently. It's the way management has set it up, it's why they make so much money.

Hard to pin exact blame here, but I'd say culture is the prime suspect.

Yes, they screwed up but they are a fine group of pilots that learned how to efficiently operate from our little airliine at SNA. I hope they can put this all behind them and continue on as they will. We operated very efficiently and they do too. Major airlines always find a way to make simple things difficult. We got bought and found out.

You have to wonder about these guys who come into these threads and talk about how great they are that they've never made such a mistake and post their resume like a peacock strutting around in front of the hens.

Thanks mate, appreciate the vote of confidence.:D

Wonder about me as you wish BUT I'm not the incompetent fool that couldn't find the correct Airport using the modern technology available just 12" in front of his eyes.....This isn't WW2.........:ugh:

I'm mean come on.......you gotta wonder about two "professional Aviators" landing 7 nm from their destination haven't you?? Or is this par for the course in your neck of the woods??:uhoh:

Mistakes...like 100+ton take-off weight errors and many other types are normal in anybody's neck of the woods....

We've all made mistakes haven't we, but I'd like to think that most of us out there wouldn't land at the wrong Airport in good weather with a fully serviceable modern Jet, unless there were mitigating circumstances......

lifeafteraviation

Please give us YOUR resume which allows YOU to pontificate on these threads, having only joined 3 months ago!

@bugg smasher
The SWA guys don't get paid by the hour, they get paid by the mile ....

So what difference did a delta of 7 miles make as far as income is concerned?

If they get paid by the mile, they should have gone around. Extra milage:E