wrote in message
oups.com...
Now I know why planes occasionally land on the wrong runway in IFR
conditions )

Well, for what it's worth, wrong-runway (or even wrong airport) landings are
much more common in visual conditions, when the pilot is trusted to find the
runway himself.

Flying an ILS involves tuning a radio to a frequency that is specific to the
runway. If an airplane winds up in a position to land on the wrong runway,
then the ILS indication will be so far off that the pilot should be flying a
"missed approach" (that is, aborting the approach to try again).

In visual conditions, simple human error can result in landing in the wrong
place. In instrument conditions, there needs to be a series of poor
judgment decisions on the part of the pilot (or the simple error of tuning
the wrong frequency into the ILS receiver, of course ...but that's not an
"accuracy of guidance" issue, so it doesn't seem relevant in this
discussion).

Pete