NWA plane lands at wrong airport

On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 21:07:35 GMT, Robey Price
wrote:

After an exhausting session with Victoria's Secret Police, WalterM140
confessed the following:

Heard a thing like this a few years ago; they thought they were landing in
Amsterdam, turned out to be Frankfort, as I recall.

Kinda...sorta. DC-10 enroute to Frankfurt, ATC over the UK started
them down early...landed in Brussels (same ILS freq as Frankfurt and
similar runway alignment).

New Captain (WRT to international flying) on his first flight after
IOE with a piece of **** First Officer (uniformly hated). CA kept
saying, "this doesn't look right, this is too early..." and the FO
kept saying "No, this is right...that's the airport." The SO was kinda
tumbleweed. CA knew prior to touchdown they were not in Frankfurt (but
not sure where he was), but landed anyway, admitted his mistake to the
passengers immediately after landing.

CA retired in short order...FO finally got fired after years of second
chances...SO retrained.


Gotta say that reflects a total breakdown in situational awareness. No
navaids in use, no crew coordination, no apparent communication, no
listening to the controller saying "Slowbird 452, this is Brussels
Approach...." Calling them "kinda tumbleweed" is an understatement.

All that being said, however, there are a lot of places in the world
in which pairs of airports are nearby and even have the same runway
alignment. It's usually a major part of squadron in-briefing to point
them out. Pairs that I recall include Bitburg/Spangdahlem,
Torrejon/Barajas, and Incirlik/Adana. The Spanish pair and the Turkish
pair all were 05/23 runways. And, all within ten miles of each other.
(Bit/Spang are 4.3 miles apart IIRC.)

"Caveat aviator"


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8