Airline crew lands at wrong airport

[+MadJeff]

Stumbled across this on CNN this morning. Seems a Northwest Airlines crew made a mistaken landing at Ellsworth AFB this morning.

 

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) -- A Northwest Airlines flight that was headed to Rapid City, South Dakota, landed a few miles off course at Ellsworth Air Force Base, and passengers had to wait in the plane for more than three hours while their crew was interrogated.

 

Passengers on Northwest Flight 1152, an Airbus A-319 from St. Paul, expected to be welcomed to Rapid City Regional Airport on Saturday, but after about five minutes they were told to close their window shades and not look out, said passenger Robert Morrell.

 

"He (the pilot) hemmed and he hawed and he said 'We have landed at an Air Force base a few miles from the Rapid City airport and now we are going to figure out how we're going to get from here to there,"' Morrell told the St. Paul Pioneer Press by cell phone during the delay Saturday.

 

Eventually, the captain and first officer were replaced by a different Northwest crew for the short hop to the right airport.

 

Northwest confirmed that the crew made an "unscheduled landing."

 

"The situation is under review and we have nothing further to add," said Northwest spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch. He would not identify the cockpit crew, or say if the pilot made an error.

 

Ellsworth controls all air space 40 miles around the base and clears landings at both the civilian airport and the base.

 

The city's airport runway is "just over the hill" from Ellsworth, and the Northwest crew had to descend through a layer of clouds, said a base spokeswoman, Lt. Christine Millette.

 

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating.

 

You can read the full story at the link below:

 

Doh!!

[Nesher]

ohhh that's nasty...

with todays technology and still pilot had a dumb mistake

maybe its really the clouds :\

[+Fates]

I read this problem as well in a daily news report I get from AIN news. The first thing that came to my mind was the rash of Bad GPS Database cards that we have been getting from Bendix/King and Honeywell for our Hawker and Learjet aircraft. I've dealt with 4 such bad databases in 2 months. These card are nothing more then PCMCIA cards that install into the GPS. They are updated monthly.

 

However, being an Airline flight, and constantly under ATC control, ATC should have known, or been able to descern the pilots actions in time to correct them. There are things like Radar's and Encoding Altimeters that update pretty regularly.

 

oh well....just my 2 cents.

 

<C>

Fates

[PG_Raptor]

You're right Fates, its not that hard to do that with full ATC control, radar, transponders and the like. But I guess one out of the million, billions of flights made every year in the US, one little upset isn't too bad :)

[Chaingun]

:D I guess as long as it ended on a runway and not some trees somewhere.

[Beer]

Sound Navigation practice requires using 2 or more sources to establish a position.

 

Position Info for the Pilots

1. GPS

2. VOR/DME

3. ATC via Center and Approach Control...

4. Visual Refrences

 

A crosscheck with the GPS vs the VOR/DME should have told them something was up; not being sure which was correct a call to ATC would have collabrated one or the other.

 

Cheers

Beer

[firehawkordy]

On a lighter note, the passengers luggage got to Rapid City first.

I can just hear it,"I'm sorry Mrs Smith, here are your husbands bags,but we kind of lost your husband."

[CowboyTodd41]

Hey guys, any landing you can walk away from (with out getting shot by USAF MP's)

[Weasel Keeper]

From what I've heard, the runways are pretty much lined up the same, and the two airports are only within something like 7 miles of each other. Simple mistake that quite a few pilots I know have either done or almost done at least once.