All pilots... how do you think THIS happened?

[gn85]

This is to all pilots or members who know about aviation.

How in the heck did this one happen?

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/Central/06/20/wrong.airport.ap/index.html

I'll have to remember this the next time I fly Northwest.

 

[Shane]

I have no idea how that happened, but I can tell you one thing:

It's damned funny.

 

[bruce]

Originally posted by gn85

Like the old joke about the Polish pilot landing in at JKF. Couldn't figure out why the strip was sooo short yet sooo wide..

 

[Chuck Leeper]

Same thing at Delta

Yrs ago, I was on a flt from Atl to Lexington, Ky. The dumba$$ landed at Frankfort, KY.

I'd made the trip many times, and knew as soon as I saw his final approach, that we were somewhere other than Lexington!!!
What with the current alerts for terrorist activity, they're lucky they didn't get shot down for entering restricted airspace at the AFB they landed at......
What a bunch of MORONS!!

 

[Ash]

The pilot was on a top secret mission to stop the reds from taking over. Its G14 classified can't say much more about it.

 

[gn85]

OK, I think I figured out what this pilot did. Somebody screwed, up. It might have been the pilot, but I'm wondering why ATC didn't notice.

OK, Ellsworth AFB(KRCA) is northwest of Rapid City Regional (KRAP). If the pilot came from the northwest heading southeast to land at runway 14 into KRAP (that's really the airport code ) then he had a visual approach. No ILS on that runway. So, in that case, he may have seen runway 13 at Ellsworth AFB and made his approach on that. ATC called and told him the runway is x miles away, report when it's in sight. He saw a runway and said, it's in sight and made his landing. Coming from the northwest, those two runways are closely alligned one after the other, although Ellsworths runway was 10 degrees off.

This is my theory. All of the info I got from running it thru FS9. He had plenty of runway to land on too. Ellsworth's runway is about 13,000 feet long.

I just wonder what ground control was saying to him. Yah, taxi to parking next to those bombers.

 

[n20junkie]

first off they said the the pilot decended threw clouds, so it depends on the weather that day, if they were IFR then the controller is to blame, i have seen it where military controllers get busy and forget that your landing at a airport other than their own and give you vectors to the wrong airport, on the low altitude ifr sectional that airport would be annotated, but there are times when you when you see a strip and just go for it, not realizing that its the wrong airport, but **** happens, justl ike in every other professions, its hard to tell what really happened, weather, controller instructions, Gps information, the IFR instrumentation readouts ( dme, vor, localizer......) and without being in the cockpit all we can do is assume.
Grant

 

[gn85]

Originally posted by n20junkie
first off they said the the pilot decended threw clouds, so it depends on the weather that day, if they were IFR then the controller is to blame, i have seen it where military controllers get busy and forget that your landing at a airport other than their own and give you vectors to the wrong airport, on the low altitude ifr sectional that airport would be annotated, but there are times when you when you see a strip and just go for it, not realizing that its the wrong airport, but **** happens, justl ike in every other professions, its hard to tell what really happened, weather, controller instructions, Gps information, the IFR instrumentation readouts ( dme, vor, localizer......) and without being in the cockpit all we can do is assume.
Grant

Very well put. I would like to hear what comes outta this, but I doubt we ever will.