United Airbus almost lands at wrong airport

Looks like they were vectored east of Lake Washington. I'm sure ATC is trying to get them to visual and they fall for the first thing they saw. BFI can be hard to see cause it lines up with the freeway and the valley. Back in the early 2000's we had a crew do a visual to RNT instead of BFI. ATC didn't do them any favors as the BFI controller cleared them to land but didn't really look out the window or his brite radar to see where the jet was going. Of course, it's the pilots job to find the right airport, not blaming ATC at all. Our jet went around and the FAA went after the crew. I think the ASAP saved them.
 
Roger Roger said:
2 things, do jet avionics have the ability to do a pseudo-approach (one manufacturer calls it a VFR approach) that will build an advisory LNAV FAC and GS for any runway at any airport, and are there declutter settings that crews can use on the MFD that make this sort of thing obvious? I mean I'm hardly Yeager but even with our 10 year old GA avionics I can't imagine lining up for the wrong runway if you've set them up properly and are even halfassedly referencing them.
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More or less yes, but 10 year old GA avionics are still 20 years ahead of anything in an airliner.
 
That's a tough one. Especially landing and departing those runways. I've flown in to BFI 100s of times and with a strong right xwind tracking the BFI ILS you could look up and see yourself perfectly lined up for Renton. Not saying that's what happened here, but those 3 airports are so close in proximity that flying from one to other is a nightmare. Back up the visual with the ILS and this mistake doesn't happen.
 
Cpt Cook said:
That's a tough one. Especially landing and departing those runways. I've flown in to BFI 100s of times and with a strong right xwind tracking the BFI ILS you could look up and see yourself perfectly lined up for Renton. Not saying that's what happened here, but those 3 airports are so close in proximity that flying from one to other is a nightmare. Back up the visual with the ILS and this mistake doesn't happen.
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Great technique, but certainly not foolproof. I have a story about that that's best told over beers at NJC.
 
MikeD said:
Anyone should be able to call a go around. and how hard would it have been for him to simply say ".....what makes you believe that's not our field, Doug?" And iron out the situation quickly and correctly?
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Totally agree.

Especially that all of our planes "self report".

In the Airbus, if the ECAM has a failure, maintenance knows. If you bust the stabilized approach criteria, FOQA knows before you're even on the ground.

Grabassery and "seeking sweet glory with a clip-on tie" is a dead art in modern times.
 
The scary thing here is RNT is a extra busy GA/boeing runway and seaplane port located on the water. I was number 5 in the pattern the other day and I couldn't imagine the chaos if an airbus comes rolling through and then goes missed not talking to tower.

Sorry but...negligence on behalf of the crew. Not saying fire them or worse but send them back to school. If they actually bothered to brief one another on the ground this could have been avoided. I am with @MikeD on this one. I bet complacency played a huge role.
 
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I don't see what the big deal is. They had a UAS, and corrected it. They didn't even make it through 1k ft. Kudos to them for not trying to "save" the approach and "turn left to BFI so you can still make the airport." (threat managed.) Pilots are outcome based thinkers and that temptation is hard to resist. Send them back to training? Give me a break.
 
Derg said:
Totally agree.

Especially that all of our planes "self report".

In the Airbus, if the ECAM has a failure, maintenance knows. If you bust the stabilized approach criteria, FOQA knows before you're even on the ground.

Grabassery and "seeking sweet glory with a clip-on tie" is a dead art in modern times.
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The technology is beginning to be a lot like that crap move "Minority Report."

In the future before you even begin an approach you'll get an ACARS message that says, "PLZ RPT TO CPS OFFICE AFTER BLK IN. NEED TO TALK ABOUT UNSTABLE APPR THAT U R ABOUT TO DO."
 
If you want old school flying, the story that goes around at my last airline is that the chief pilot was sat in his office one day, with a view of the runway threshold of the home base from his window. He sees a jet less than a mile final with the gear just starting to travel down. After it lands, he phones the handlers and tells them to "get the pilot of the aircraft that just landed in my office. NOW"

20 minutes or so later the head of training walks in and says "Hi Bob, what did you want me for?"
 
Acrofox said:
I don't!

~Fox
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Even when there wasn't another airport for 150 miles and no approach, I still had the extended centerline built and my CDI on it. OBS mode on the garmin products works. Because sometimes there is another "airport" close by, just not an official one, and I make mistakes occasional.
 
juxtapilot said:
I don't see what the big deal is. They had a UAS, and corrected it. They didn't even make it through 1k ft. Kudos to them for not trying to "save" the approach and "turn left to BFI so you can still make the airport." (threat managed.) Pilots are outcome based thinkers and that temptation is hard to resist. Send them back to training? Give me a break.
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ABX did this same thing about 2 months ago, they were coming from YVR I believe. Only difference, they made a hard left and kept on the approach.
I hope you don't feel like I was coming down on the crew. I'd hope they do get debriefed in some manner or file reports so at least something might be learned about how to prevent this in the future. Unfortunately this information is rarely shared with the GA community that goes in and out of these particular airports everyday.
 
The best thing to do is note this kind of stuff and realize I can happen to YOU. Try and develop some kind of mitigation. Learn from others. I have pretty strong feelings about 121 pilots vs 135 and why something like this would happen but I'll just keep that to myself.

91/135 pilots do these kind of repo's all the time. Usually they are empty so crews have the luxury of extra time and briefing everything BEFORE you take off.
 
RDoug said:
Did I hear BIF/ELP? I spent my entire FAA career telling people on a weekly basis, "You're lined up for runway two-one at Biggs. Runway two-two El Paso is to your left."
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Why did the HI-ILS 22 approach disappear? No longer published? Was a bit of a bear to fly at 300 kts, but worked out.........other than not overshooting final.
 
MikeD said:
I'd still like to know what kind of preplanning went into this and where the mistakes for them were. Lack of prep? Complacency of some kind?
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I would imagine, from a flight crew standpoint, the amount of preplanning that went into this was just like every other airline flight. Show up to crew room/FBO/plane. Get paperwork, look at paperwork, load box (if applicable), brief, run checklists/flip switches, and go fly. There really isn't any "preplanning" per se in the airline world, at least not that I've seen to date. I would think in a charter to an unfamiliar location you might look at the paperwork a bit closer and maybe even (GASP) pull out a chart, but you expect dispatch and the charter coordinator to have taken care of everything.
 
Rocketman99 said:
I would imagine, from a flight crew standpoint, the amount of preplanning that went into this was just like every other airline flight. Show up to crew room/FBO/plane. Get paperwork, look at paperwork, load box (if applicable), brief, run checklists/flip switches, and go fly. There really isn't any "preplanning" per se in the airline world, at least not that I've seen to date. I would think in a charter to an unfamiliar location you might look at the paperwork a bit closer and maybe even (GASP) pull out a chart, but you expect dispatch and the charter coordinator to have taken care of everything.
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And that's the point I'm making. Sure, routine trip legs to familiar places on familiar routings would be just like you say: like every other flight. Going from A to B fairly distant, etc.

In this case, it seems like somewhat a non-standard situation where, also as you state, some preplanning beyond the administrative stuff that dispatch gives you and the charter coord works out.....some preplanning just so the crew has more an idea of what to expect ahead of them (even some short discussion or study between themselves in the cockpit) that things are going to be happening rapidly here after takeoff, probably going to be some gotcha's and airspace to avoid or possibly have to be aware of here, here and here, etc. And what does this field look like again? Roughly how long to get there on this short leg? That kind of stuff.

I'm sure the crew obviously looked over the paperwork like every other flight; but my curiousity is did they realize that this wasn't "every other flight", or not, what with it being non-standard in ways....not the usual norm of the longer leg flights, but a short repo flight.......almost like a VFR hop that any GA pilot would do? One that might require some more in-depth SA? Or.....may one or both of them already have been familiar with the area up there and possibly thought "no problem, we've got this" (a reasonable thought if that were the case). Those are just the things that I don't know yet, but would be interested if only just to learn which trap(s) actually bit them, and taking the lesson learned from there and applying it. The back-to-basics thing.
 
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