They could transmit on Guard telling the aircraft approaching RWY XX to wave off/go around. The USAF is not known to be shy about transmitting on guard. :E

Sure they could, and for all we know maybe they did. We don't know the facts yet. Equally there may have been no traffic activity at the base and therefore no reason for the controller to be looking out of his tower cab just in case an airliner, piloted by a qualified crew and equipped with multiple navigational aids might be erroneously making an approach to the base!

I used to work at the airport at the bottom of the photo. You'll notice there's a nice, long, parallel runway not far away at the top of the photo:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ld_-_Texas.jpg

Desert air, visual approaches from 20 or 30 miles out common, lots of smart pilots lined up on the wrong airport/runway. A few even landed on the wrong one. But we did catch most errors before they became news fodder or reportable incidents.

Thing is though, I still recall my first flight into ELP, and briefing my commercial student that there were two airports in close proximity, and we'd make darn sure we saw both, and were looking at the correct one before we did something dumb.

Excuse my ignorance but what is the norm for arrival brief and setup in the US?

How hard is it to tune up the ILS or program a runway extension? Surely that would resolve any ambiguity that would arise. And yes I get it that there are runways everywhere in the US but in this day and age to line up on the wrong runway is almost inexcusable given what is available in RNP capability.

Pilots at Delta are required to back up any visual approach with all resources available. If a IFR approach is available it should be set up in the box and tuned. If not a extension should be built off the runway.
One thing to be aware of is that operations into smaller US airports is quite different then anything you might find in Europe. You are often cleared for a visual and released to the common freq or tower 30 miles out. How you get to the airport is up to you. Not that many years ago you could get a cruise clearance and it might still be in use. We would be cleared to cruise Bozeman airport from 100 miles out in a 727. Everything after that was up to the pilot.

Ryanair have been mistaking Charleroi for Brussels for years... :oh:

:) but that's only by 26nm. Frankfurt Hahn is 50nm from the city!

How can you lay that at the door of RYR when the airport describes itself as Brussels South ?

Brussels South Charleroi Airport

Because Ryanair "encouraged" them to do so when they started flying there? Same thing for Hahn and a host of other RYR airports.

How long had they been flying that day (sectors) and what was their roster like for the previous month? Could fatigue have played a part here?

ww.irishtimes.com/news/ryanair-flight-to-derry-lands-at-military-airfield-1.1289817
Eirjet flying on behalf of Ryanair lands at Ballykelly military base instead of City of Derry. 2006.

"How long had they been flying that day (sectors) and what was their roster like for the previous month? Could fatigue have played a part here?"

Hah! This happened in the US ! The NTSB here in the states is only concerned about the previous 72 hours and nothing more!

Londonderry event actual report can be found at
http://picma.org.uk/sites/default/fi...ondonderry.pdf

I'll throw out the BS card on this one being a large distance between the two airports and 4 letter identifiers in FMC for EBCI versus EBBR.

captjns - it's a sarcastic joke, as in airlines mistaking Crawley (Gatwick) for "London," or Grapevine (DFW) for "Dallas," or Ontario/Burbank/Orange County for "Los Angeles."

At least here in Denver, when we built an airport 30 miles out in the suburbs, we annexed the land, so the runways really are in "Denver." ;) Sort of.

There is a famous story, perhaps apocryphal, of Fiorello LaGuardia and his ticket to New York:

Fiorello LaGuardia -- America's Mayor --

Have you gone down Tower road of late? The city is quickly moving to close the gap. Pena is gonna have to buy and sell some more land pretty soon further out.

Or maybe they could build another E-W runway and actually use the two they have.

Well, Peña has been out of the equation for over 20 years. He left 3 years before the airport opened.

But you're right, we're filling in the 1-mile-wide-by-15-miles-long "gerrymander corridor" of former wheat fields we "negotiated" away from Adams County. And other cities (Commerce City, Aurora) are also growing out to meet the airport's borders.

That's because he made his money off the airport deal and moved away.

And how long before those new residents start complaining about the noise :ugh: