Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: earl1937 on January 12, 2014, 09:45:32 PM
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:headscratch: How in the world did a Southwest Airlines, Boeing 737 pilot mistake Branson, Mo's 3700 foot general aviation airport, which is close to down town, for the 7,000 foot runway used by the airlines into and out of Branson? Just happened tonight! Now, remember, this is a two pilot aircraft, so can't wait to hear the excuse for this boo-boo!
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They're not the first crew to land at the wrong airport and they won't be the last. They're quite fortunate that they stopped where they did as either end of the runway is, shall we say, inhospitable to airplanes.
They'll all have about the same "excuse" as you say which is they expected to see something, saw something that looked like what they were expecting to see and made further decisions based on that rather than crosschecking their navigational equipment. The human brain can F with you like that. Add in a host of other variables such as fatigue, weather and local (in)familiarity and you have your standard run of the mill accident chain.
Atlas put a 747 Dreamlifter on the wrong field in Wichita in November. A good example of just how it can happen when you mistake Jabara for McConnell.
C-17 into St. Petersburg vs MacDill AFB.
TWA into Ohio State instead of Port Columbus.
I know of a handful of others that never made the news. Elkhart, IN vs South Bend. Florida Panhandle airports getting mixed up. Rapid City and Ellsworth AFB.
I've also seen in-game mix ups. Close fields that have pilots RTB toward the wrong airfield close to the front only to be greeted by ack and especially coming overhead the wrong CV when you get a couple in close proximity.
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There may be two new openings on the SW seniority list shortly.
ILS 32 to the airport they wanted to land at as well as RNAV to each end. Be interesting to hear the excuse because that is all it will be….an excuse.
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Not even a little bit of disagreement. Just that it's a similar story each time it happens.
The time I landed at the wrong airport (from the client's perspective) I still landed at the one I was dispatched to :)
That's a slllllllow taxi back, a phone call to flight ops to email out new paperwork RFN and a verbal blessing to head over there and sort out the mess later.
Greenville-Spartanburg vs Spartanburg Downtown SC.
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quite some years ago, we had a Captain of a Fokker F28, that landed on the wrong airport twice within a few months...
His excuse was that the runways where going "the same way" :rolleyes:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Linjeflyg_F28_Basel.jpg)
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They're not the first crew to land at the wrong airport and they won't be the last.
Someone has gone to the trouble of compiling a list:
http://www.thirdamendment.com/wrongway.html
I was a kid living in Columbus when the TWA flight landed at Don Scott Field (1967). I always thought that, given the choice between a pilot who could navigate well and one who could fly well, I'd prefer the one who could land a 707 on that runway.
- oldman
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quite some years ago, we had a Captain of a Fokker F28, that landed on the wrong airport twice within a few months...
His excuse was that the runways where going "the same way" :rolleyes:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Linjeflyg_F28_Basel.jpg)
:airplane: I guess that as instrument pilots who have flown into airports that we are not familiar with, we have all had some confusion about something which caused us to excute a missed approach immediately because something was not right. Mine came during a back course approach to runway 23, Anniston, Ala, one rainy morning in 1962. BMG approach could help with vectors down to 3,000 MSL as I remember, but for the love of me, couldn't get the old needle to center. Wind was out of the NW, pretty good, because I figured I was going to have to carry at least 12 to 15 degrees of drift correction. After second missed approach procedure, decided to go back to square one. check list in hand, (had one I made for instrument approaches, because I was flying different aircraft with different radio systems.) Oops, back course switch on localizer instrument. Of course then it all made sense, executed the approach without any further ado, except a little embarrassment to the "big" guy, Jasper C. Davis, a B-24 pilot who flew 28 missions in Italy during the big war. His only remark was "I kinda thought I knew what was going on but figured you would figure it out".
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I learned to fly in Springdale, Ark….same place the Younkin clan is from. One day we're standing around listening to Unicom and hear a Lear talking to Drake Field (8-10 miles south). Hmmmm, Drake has a FSS station, wonder why the Lear is on 122.8. About then someone notices a Lear on downwind for Springdale. Cool, don't see many of them on our 3000' runway. Folks figured he must know what he's doing, after all he's flying one of them Lears!! He went off the end into the pasture, no damage 'kept to his shorts.
When I was flying the bombers we landed at the wrong airport -- oh it was the one the we pilots intended to be at, just not the one the boss wanted us at. HQ would tell us "your next stop is Merced, California". Ok, we plan to go to Merced. Where they really wanted us was at the old Castle AFB which is Atwater, CA. We landed at Merced and noticed there was NO ONE to meet our glorious airplanes….that's odd…..not even the stop coordinator is here. Figured out what had happened and launched for Castle. It was my leg in the -17, as we took off at Merced I called for gear up then noticed we were pretty much on final for Castle….had to do a 360 to have time for the gear to get down before landing.
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Marshal field FRI and Manhattan Kansas MHK I am sure they have fooled many people. In fact If I remember right in the airport directory there is even a line about the fields looking the same.
Both lay just past a river with and a road with the same runway layout, and only about 6 miles apart.
HiTech
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Marshal field FRI and Manhattan Kansas MHK I am sure they have fooled many people. In fact If I remember right in the airport directory there is even a line about the fields looking the same.
Both lay just past a river with and a road with the same runway layout, and only about 6 miles apart.
HiTech
:airplane: Another scary approach and easy to get confused about, if you had never been in there before is Wheeler downtown airport in Kanas city! Wheee, first time I went in there was just after dark, but was VFR, so other than a eyeful of lights, was not any problem. But did have to go in there serveral times later on, some of which were IFR and I remember it as being one of those you had to be on your toes all the way to touchdown. One ILS had like a 4 or 5 degree glideslope, which is pretty steep. Anytime going into a strange field with a 1800RVR, indefinite ceiling could be un-comfortable, but with a co-pilot in my later years of flying, it wasn't to bad.
Approaching any runway at night, shape the runway lights make in your mind tells you about how high you are, so with these guys going into 200 to 300 foot wide runways day in and day out, makes you wonder how that 100 foot runway looked as they were beginning to flare for landing!
75 Foot wide runways, such as Bluefield, Va was no problem when I was young and had good depth perception, but as I approached 60 or so, I could really begin to tell why the FAA stopped airline pilots at age 62 or what ever it used to be.
Another airport which was confusing at night or IFR, was Ronald Regan in down town Washington, which had a "sag" mid way down the runway and you are flaring and thinking you are about to touch down and nothing, wondering if you forgot the gear! LOL
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Night time flying combined with VFR decision is obviously a bad combination if you ignore GPS.. The Jeppson charts have all the data necessary to NOT make this mistake if you select the correct Nav freq and approach control - much less if you have a VLF Omega or GPS handy.
The clown was grounded as he should have been.
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In 1962 United landed a big ol DC-8 at 4,600 ft Troutdale instead of 8,800 ft Portland. As I recall the story, Boeing stripped the plane down to the nubbins and loaded just enough fuel to make it from Troutdale to Portland (10 miles), then had a test pilot fly her off the runway.
(http://www.panamair.org/aircraft/DouglasDC-8/dc8-stewart.jpg)
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Pan Am did it with a 707 at RAF Northolt , also Air India .
http://www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1001608/
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Night time flying combined with VFR decision is obviously a bad combination if you ignore GPS.. The Jeppson charts have all the data necessary to NOT make this mistake if you select the correct Nav freq and approach control - much less if you have a VLF Omega or GPS handy.
The clown was grounded as he should have been.
:airplane: It will certainly be interesting to hear the CVR during that approach! If they had Nav1 set up on the FD, and as far away from the right field as they were, the second the HSI glideslope display showed a 2 dot deviation up, should have been all kinds of aural and visual warning going off! Not to mention the localizer indicator should have been off also and again should have been some kind of alerts going off!
Supposed to be the latest version of the 737, so I guess it had the latest "glass" cockpit displays.
Maybe its time to get away from all these automated approaches and get back to manual flying again!
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Maybe its time to get away from all these automated approaches and get back to manual flying again!
If they were using the automation they wouldn't have landed at the wrong airport...
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Complacency is the root cause.
Complacency can be a factor in both automated and hand-flown approaches.
As Golfer pointed out, in this case the automation was off and complacency was on.
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Complacency is the root cause.
Complacency can be a factor in both automated and hand-flown approaches.
As Golfer pointed out, in this case the automation was off and complacency was on.
:airplane: You guys are right I guess, but just having hard time getting my head around the fact that they didn't use any cross checks to back up their decision making. If they had, might not have happened.
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Obviously.
That highlights the complacency.
The point is that it would not have mattered if they were automated or hand-flying.
If they failed to do the routine cross-checking that the FAA, their company and their paying passengers require/expect of them, manual flying isn't the issue. Automated approaches aren't the issue.
Failure to crosscheck is failure to crosscheck whether the autopilot or the pilot himself is manipulating the controls.
And, again, to highlight….the automation was OFF in this particular case.
It's really a basic CRM problem involving the multiple aspects of CRM. Loss of situational awareness, leadership, standard operating procedures, automation management (or lack of), decision making…they pretty much lit up the board on CRM failure.
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Obviously.
That highlights the complacency.
The point is that it would not have mattered if they were automated or hand-flying.
If they failed to do the routine cross-checking that the FAA, their company and their paying passengers require/expect of them, manual flying isn't the issue. Automated approaches aren't the issue.
Failure to crosscheck is failure to crosscheck whether the autopilot or the pilot himself is manipulating the controls.
And, again, to highlight….the automation was OFF in this particular case.
It's really a basic CRM problem involving the multiple aspects of CRM. Loss of situational awareness, leadership, standard operating procedures, automation management (or lack of), decision making…they pretty much lit up the board on CRM failure.
You appear to know all the facts and speak from a position of expertise on this event. Are you a Souhwest pilot?
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I am not SW but I do have some experience in the biz.
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You appear to know all the facts and speak from a position of expertise on this event. Are you a Souhwest pilot?
....ermmmm....What's your take, Puma, if you can say?
- oldman
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....ermmmm....What's your take, Puma, if you can say?
- oldman
The news media experts are my source just like everyone else in here.
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At least they didn't land in the wrong country like Armin Faber...
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At least they didn't land in the wrong country like Armin Faber...
:headscratch: Now there are news reports that a company dispatcher was riding jump seat! Wonder what effect his presents in the cockpit made, if any!
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:headscratch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Faber
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From the link:
Faber, with only one cannon working, pulled an Immelmann turn into the sun and shot down his pursuer in a head-on attack
OMG! a RL HO dweeb! Don't let this info get out to General Discussion!