Southwest lands at wrong airport?

Am I the only one who thinks these pilots shouldn't be fired? Everyday on every flight I'm sure a mistake is made - most are likely minor and never even realized, while others are more public like this one. In healthcare when we make mistakes people die, but we don't hang the person who made the mistake. If they have a long history of poor care, year maybe, if it was egregious then probably - but good employees can make mistakes but can then be a catalyst and spokesperson about the issue and help improve safety overall. I doubt these were horrendous pilots, probably did what 1000s of pilots did last night, they're just unlucky the cascade of events got them on the news! I certainly don't think it is worthy of having their career ended over -
 
I make minor slips and lapses daily at work, and the person next to me catches them, or I do. The same works the other way.

However, a crew landing at the wrong airport is in my view a "serious incident" - ie it could have been an accident but only luck or other factors stopped it from being so.

In this case, a very minor change in landing performance could have ended up with multiple fatalities, and the "negligence" discussion on the Comair thread would all of a sudden have newfound relevance.

I think of all the arse-covering SOPs my company has to prevent this sort of thing, and sometimes we moan about them (especially the crazy way of doing a 'visual' in LNAV/VNAV AP engaged) but we're yet to land at the wrong airport.
 
I_Money said:
Am I the only one who thinks these pilots shouldn't be fired? Everyday on every flight I'm sure a mistake is made - most are likely minor and never even realized, while others are more public like this one. In healthcare when we make mistakes people die, but we don't hang the person who made the mistake. If they have a long history of poor care, year maybe, if it was egregious then probably - but good employees can make mistakes but can then be a catalyst and spokesperson about the issue and help improve safety overall. I doubt these were horrendous pilots, probably did what 1000s of pilots did last night, they're just unlucky the cascade of events got them on the news! I certainly don't think it is worthy of having their career ended over -
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How about offered a job with the company in a non-flying position? (which for a pilot, is probably akin to being fired). But I agree - the only difference between this and Comair was that they apparently noticed in enough time to get the ship stopped. 4 out of 5 times I bet this ends with bent metal and injuries, if not worse.

737 guys - is that enough runway to get the thing out of there empty?
 
Boris Badenov said:
A lot of us don't get a choice. Outlawing visuals seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater to me. IMHO, what's needed isn't further restricting what pilots can do, but improving training, oversight, etc. so that we are capable and competent at using any of the various tools at our disposal. There's nothing inherently dangerous about a visual approach, under the proper conditions (I'm sure you'd agree, as I'd wager you've done more than a few of them). We've been doing them for, what, over a century? IMHO, we don't need to demand more assistance from all the various bells, whistles, and regulatory agencies, we need to demand better performance from ourselves and our training orthodoxies. And that's not a bag on this crew, necessarily. Maybe they were fatigued, or maybe it was their first flight in to a totally unfamiliar airport (I believe the Branson airport opened for business in the last few years) and they got busy with any of the other million things you can get busy with and just didn't have time to properly check their position, or hell, maybe the FMS said that WAS the right airport. Maybe it was the first visual they'd done for a really long time because they normally DO fly an ILS everywhere they go and they got sloppy because "visual approach" isn't something that's covered in the sim. Who knows? Anything is possible at this point.

But I rather think that further restrictions and automation-dependence is not the solution to incidents like this, whatever the particulars. If the airplane can't get to the right runway on a legal visual approach, IMHO, the fault almost certainly does not lay with the regulatory authorities.
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I don't see (at the very least) putting a visual approach or loc freq as as a reliance on technology but rather the use if all available resources.

I'm not saying fly a full blown ILS every time, but it's nice to be able to fly by looking out the window but also be able to confirm what you see by glancing inside.
 
The lowest my 738 FCOM tables go is 1220m, and at 10°C Sea Level, you could be up to 53.8T at Flap 5. Obviously with higher Flap settings and the Boeing laptop tool, your experience may vary, but doable without too much of a high heart rate, but a fairly low V1.

Reports I've read suggest a -700.
 
If you glance into the history of these kind of events, its never all that long between planes landing at the wrong airport somewhere in the world. Its just now the media is so quick to jump on it that the news spreads like wildfire on the interwebz. I really don't think this is happening more often in a trending way...its all coincidental. We went many years without a fatal 121 crash in the US then Asiana and UPS both wrecked airplanes a few months apart. Doesn't mean flying is getting more dangerous.

We're not in Europe or Asia, ATC doesn't want everyone on the ILS into major hubs in perfect weather, so visual approaches are here to stay. It can happen to anyone...unless you don't let it happen to you.
 
Joshwa said:
Of course, I fly in Europe so with the lack of GA fields it's harder to make this kind of mistake.
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I'd say in this situation that would have something to do with it. The fastest thing I've flown into this airport was at night is a Cessna 340. So it wasn't an issue sniffing out which was which.

But I could imagine in an approach in a jet the two are easy to confuse. This runway/airport was redone a few years ago (~10+, they cleared the area out quite a bit (trees, etc)), is up on a plateau type hill, and for the both of them being in BFE it stands out real well for being the smaller of the two. So it would seem to me to be pretty easy to lock onto as 'the' runway. For as small as it is it really stands out well in the air and looks bigger than it is. Nice GA facility.
 
Autothrust Blue said:
Incidentally, WTF does this have to do with the quartering of soldiers?
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Nothing at all, even says so on their homepage. I just typed Northwest Airbus Rapid City wrong airport into google and that is what I found.

As for these poor souls flying that thing I will reserve judgement until the FAA and company has their way with them. No metal was bent and no one was hurt so they have that going for them.
 
ChasenSFO said:
If you glance into the history of these kind of events, its never all that long between planes landing at the wrong airport somewhere in the world. Its just now the media is so quick to jump on it that the news spreads like wildfire on the interwebz. I really don't think this is happening more often in a trending way...its all coincidental. We went many years without a fatal 121 crash in the US then Asiana and UPS both wrecked airplanes a few months apart. Doesn't mean flying is getting more dangerous.
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Aside from general aviation where I know people personally who have in fact landed at the wrong airport, I think the media has captured every incident involving a commercial airliner landing at the wrong airport. It seems to be trending more lately as there have been in the last year and a half 4 incidences that I am aware of. I believe that is more up from past years in which it seemed like there were a few years spacing between each incident.

Who knows, maybe when it happens, luck would have it they would all happen in close succession by happenstance? When you have so many incidences back to back, it seems to be an issue.

I agree, I hope visual approaches don't go away. It seems pilots landing on the wrong runway is trending as a safety concern, but I don't think getting rid of visual approaches is the answer. It may just be as simple as following SOP, verifying the simple things like the HSI, or verifying runway heading. I hope this is the case, and that more emphasis in recurrent is all that is needed to curb these incidents from taking place.
 
I supposed, but if 4 happened this year, none happen for 3 years, then 4 more happen the next year, I still wouldn't say it's trending.
 
ChasenSFO said:
I supposed, but if 4 happened this year, none happen for 3 years, then 4 more happen the next year, I still wouldn't say it's trending.
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I agree, but I don't think there has been this many this close together in the last 10 years. I would be curious to see what the statistics are of reported incidences of wrong airport landings over the years.


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To be fair, light aircraft and full power (we go up to 26k, but there is a customer 27k bump option) you go like an absolute rocket ship. Have done it from time to time with crazy Italian skippers. We limit pitch to +20 for pax comfort and even at that you're still accelerating way above V2 + 20 and doing 5000fpm.

Not a good idea with a low level off, obvs.
 
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