Serious question for you guys: I've always heard that there's no time for VFR charts in transport category jet aircraft. Everything is out of the Jepp Airway Manual, with the route backed up on an IFR enroute chart - although for the most part you program up (or download) the route into the FMC and then follow LNAV/VNAV while referencing and briefing the plates when appropriate.
Historically I've heard the excuse that it isn't feasible to carry around every sectional/TAC/WAC chart in your cockpit, and too time consuming to find the right one, unfold it and find your destination airport when briefing each approach. Nevermind the fact that everything happens so much faster in jet aircraft and you're trying to stay several steps ahead of the airplane. However this is 2014, and tablet based apps like ForeFlight have revolutionized our situational awareness potential by literally putting your GPS position, course, altitude and groundspeed on any VFR or IFR chart you want. With many companies already transitioning to tablets as EFBs for IFR charts, what is the harm in switching over to the VFR sectional tab at the end of your approach brief if you anticipate a visual approach? What used to be prohibitively time consuming now takes about 5 seconds.
While I don't have access to the Jepps, I went back and looked at the NACO charts for the intended destinations of the last three high profile wrong airport landings (C-17 bound for MacDill that landed at Peter O'Knight, Atlas 747 bound for McConnel that landed at Jabara, and finally the Southwest 737 bound for Branson that landed at Clark Downtown airport). I was surprised, because I've seen plenty of NACO plates which depict nearby airports with similar runway configurations in the plan view - but none of the airports they mistakenly landed at were on any of the NACO plates for their destinations. In each case, they could have briefed the approach plate perfectly and would still have no idea to expect to see another similar airport prematurely. While both the 737NG and the 747-400 (and up) have the EHSI/Navigation Display MFDs, they are based on 1990s human factors engineering and the airports are displayed as simple circles (which clutter up the screen and are often turned off!), so there's no clue in that the other runway could be aligned with your destination runway. You could certainly notice you were heading to the wrong circle eventually, but it sounds like the common factor in all these incidents is that both crew members transitioned from "heads down" to looking outside 10+ miles out, and then didn't adequately crosscheck or back up with the IAP on the way in.
Surprisingly, I think this CNN op-ed author laid out the problem very well:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/13/opinion/goyer-airplane-wrong-runway/
The CRM/Threat Assessment discussion thus far has been fascinating, but even if the crew backs up the approach with the IAP and realizes through proper crosscheck that the instruments aren't agreeing with what their eyes are telling them, they will still be surprised and confused. My question in all of this is how is the crew supposed to be expected to assess procedural threats for a VISUAL landing when they are configured and equipped with only instrument charts? In all three of these high profile cases, a cursory 2 second check of the destination airport on a VFR sectional would alert the crew to the threat of seeing the wrong airport:
1.) In the case of the C-17 in Tampa, the Knight airport has the same runway orientation as MacDill and is located on a similar north/south peninsula jutting into the Tampa bay! It is not depicted on the ILS/LOC Rwy 22 (NACO) approach chart.
2.) For the Atlas 747 Dreamlifter in Wichita, there are THREE airports with similar layouts along the ILS/LOC Rwy 19R final approach course to Mc Connel AFB (Cessna, Beech Factory and Jabara)! None are on the plan view on that NACO chart.
3.) For the SWA 737 going to Branson, MO, the Clark Downtown airport is not shown in the plan view on the RNAV (GPS) RWY 14 plate, but the geographic differences are huge. Clark is on the southeast corner of a large town, bordered by a large river on the west side an a large highway on the east. BBG is in the middle of nowhere much further south from town, and well east of that highway.
With these glaring differences in mind, it almost seems hypocritical for crews to fly a STAR, brief an instrument approach and then accept a visual from ATC (often rushed either to get ahead of other traffic or just get-there-itis). What good is threat assessment if you're trying to apply instrument-only threats to the visual environment? Backing up with an instrument approach and good CRM/instrument crosscheck should work 100% of the time if everyone's on their game, but it is a defensive and reactionary measure meant to rescue the crew once they've already gotten confused, and it's human nature to look outside once you think you know where you're landing.
With that said, I think there is a visual vs. instrument procedural training aspect to this problem, and I wonder if consulting an EFB tablet-based sectional/TAC during the approach brief (or supplementing with it as a moving map during the visual) would improve crew's situational awareness and foresight into what to expect when accepting a visual approach in the 121 environment?