Military Airports

amjon

amjon

Pilot and A Half (for now
I was talking to a co-worker today about planes mistaking one airport for another. We were discussing MacDill and how planes mistake it for Peter Knight in Tampa fairly often. He was also telling me that a large commercial plane landed there (mistaking it for TPA). Would it make it easier to identify military airports if they used a different color to paint the runway markings? I know the beacon is different, but you can't really see that during the day.
 
TFaudree_ERAU said:
El Paso Intl and Biggs AAF. There's even a note on the Jeppesens I believe.
Click to expand...

There is...see attached

amjon said:
I know the beacon is different, but you can't really see that during the day.
Click to expand...

There is no need to if the crew follows navigation and sets up the ILS frequencies for 22 or the LOC for 4. The problem normally occurs when the crews call the field in sight and are cleared for the visual and do not cross reference the available nav aids.

I believe 9E did this sometime ago and landed at BTL instead of AZO.
 

Attachments

amjon said:
I was talking to a co-worker today about planes mistaking one airport for another. We were discussing MacDill and how planes mistake it for Peter Knight in Tampa fairly often. He was also telling me that a large commercial plane landed there (mistaking it for TPA). Would it make it easier to identify military airports if they used a different color to paint the runway markings? I know the beacon is different, but you can't really see that during the day.
Click to expand...

I think they should camoflage the runways, then us civies wouldnt see them, hence we wouldnt accidently land on them.....pbbbbtttt:sitaware:
Hacker15e said:
Wouldn't it be awesome if the FAA even had diagrams that showed what the airports looked like from the air?
Click to expand...


WIN :rotfl:
I tell you maybe adding a radio signal that planes could somehow follow a track that somehow lined up with the centerline of those darn "big airport" runways might be helpful too, maybe I should patent that idea......doh

or as a Chinese flight Student once said..."ALL MERICAN AIPORT LOOK ALIKE":insane:
 
Some say there are no dumb questions, but.....:p

Seriously though, +1 about knowing where you are. It's easy to tell in IFR/night conditions because of the rotating beacon, but I figure you aren't normally landing at the wrong airport anyway. If you are talking to ATC, more than likely they will catch it......I don't know of any mil fields that aren't controlled (at least in the daytime).
 
American Eagle did something like the OP described down here. Mistook an outlying field for the civilian airport, while shooting an approach to the civilian airport. Landed and had to bus the passengers up to airport. How you mistake an outlying field for a large commercial airport probably requires a massive brain fart from both pilots, especially when you are shooting an approach and should have your instruments referencing you towards the right airfield.
 
rpfeif said:
American Eagle did something like the OP described down here. Mistook an outlying field for the civilian airport, while shooting an approach to the civilian airport. Landed and had to bus the passengers up to airport. How you mistake an outlying field for a large commercial airport probably requires a massive brain fart from both pilots, especially when you are shooting an approach and should have your instruments referencing you towards the right airfield.
Click to expand...

Yeah I guess they must have taken over visually or something, but anyone who has ever been to CRP would know that it looks nothing like NGP (and I don't even think they have any of the same runways either 13L/R =/= 17)
 
///AMG said:
Some say there are no dumb questions, but.....:p

Seriously though, +1 about knowing where you are. It's easy to tell in IFR/night conditions because of the rotating beacon, but I figure you aren't normally landing at the wrong airport anyway. If you are talking to ATC, more than likely they will catch it......I don't know of any mil fields that aren't controlled (at least in the daytime).
Click to expand...
Well at Eglin they don't do that good a job of controlling and their is an aux field North of there that is nothing like a Navy OLF. You could call the airport and land there if you lossed a little SA.

rpfeif said:
American Eagle did something like the OP described down here. Mistook an outlying field for the civilian airport, while shooting an approach to the civilian airport. Landed and had to bus the passengers up to airport. How you mistake an outlying field for a large commercial airport probably requires a massive brain fart from both pilots, especially when you are shooting an approach and should have your instruments referencing you towards the right airfield.
Click to expand...
If it was like the OLFs around NAS Pensacola it must of have been a turboprop. I think any one in a jet transport (a buckeye doesnt count) would have lhao at the other dude if he suggested we land on that...
 
Continental airlines landed at Cabaniss NOLF back in '97 instead of Corpus.

NWA landed at Ellsworth AFB just a few years ago instead of Rapid City Airport.

A number of fields are parallel in addition to ELP/BIF. DMA/TUS is another commonly mistaken one, though less so.

With ELP, if flying the the old HI-ILS to 22, if you overshot the turn from the DME arc on the penetration track to final, you easily lined up with BIFs runway. Problem was the LR was from the VORTAC east of the field, and while turning, you were in the middle of changing from the VORTAC to the LOC. So it got busy, and easy to glom onto the first runway you saw.
 
Dyess and Abilene are close, one of our guys ( a German fella) said he wasn't told about it on his IOE?? I still imagine him on the ground with a boot on his neck and rifle barrel in his ear
 
MikeD said:
Continental airlines landed at Cabaniss NOLF back in the '80s instead of Corpus.
Click to expand...


Yeah both fields have a 17/35 runway and they lined up at the wrong field. Seems every sim instructor uses this as a horror story to 'teach us a lesson', alot of arm chair quarterbacks, doesn't suprise me.
 
MikeD said:
Continental airlines landed at Cabaniss NOLF back in the '80s instead of Corpus.

NWA landed at Ellsworth AFB just a few years ago instead of Rapid City Airport.

A number of fields are parallel in addition to ELP/BIF. DMA/TUS is another commonly mistaken one, though less so.

With ELP, if flying the the old HI-ILS to 22, if you overshot the turn from the DME arc on the penetration track to final, you easily lined up with BIFs runway. Problem was the LR was from the VORTAC east of the field, and while turning, you were in the middle of changing from the VORTAC to the LOC. So it got busy, and easy to glom onto the first runway you saw.
Click to expand...

KEFD and KHOU are 7 miles apart, and have similar runway layouts. KEFD will have a Southwest 737 line-up for KEFD on occasion, but none that have actually landed to my knowledge.
 
amjon said:
I was talking to a co-worker today about planes mistaking one airport for another. We were discussing MacDill and how planes mistake it for Peter Knight in Tampa fairly often. He was also telling me that a large commercial plane landed there (mistaking it for TPA). Would it make it easier to identify military airports if they used a different color to paint the runway markings? I know the beacon is different, but you can't really see that during the day.
Click to expand...

Longest runway at TPF is 3400', not much room for a plane of much size. That is where I did my initial CFI and the examiner told me about one of ATP's seminoles that landed at McDill by accident. They didn't take it too lightly!!:D
 
rpfeif said:
Yeah both fields have a 17/35 runway and they lined up at the wrong field. Seems every sim instructor uses this as a horror story to 'teach us a lesson', alot of arm chair quarterbacks, doesn't suprise me.
Click to expand...

Isn't it their job to teach you lessons? Not much to armchair, they landed at the wrong. FO was on IOE, Capt was a check airman, and neither had been to the area in a a couple years. It was the parallel 13/31 runways that were the culprit between KNGW and KCRP in this case, as the crew was flying the LOC 31 into CRP, when they landed at NGW. On the attached plate, one can see where NGW sits just southwest of DUCKY IAF. Wx was cloudy with about 5 miles viz.

In fact, CRP has a permanent NOTAM as a result of this incident.

http://204.108.4.16/d-tpp/1002/05032L31.PDF
 
granlistillo said:
Well at Eglin they don't do that good a job of controlling and their is an aux field North of there that is nothing like a Navy OLF. You could call the airport and land there if you lossed a little SA.
Click to expand...

Funny you should mention that. Knew a guy from my timeframe in API who (while still in IFS) accidentally landed his cessna at whiting field instead of the civvie school in Eglin that he was supposed to land at. Had some crazy excuse for why it happened....they ended up keeping him for a while, then he attrited later on (maybe even in API...can't remember). He was a weird dude, knew him from NROTC, and I can imagine that he had lost his SA long before getting into the cockpit ;)
 
granlistillo said:
Well at Eglin they don't do that good a job of controlling and their is an aux field North of there that is nothing like a Navy OLF. You could call the airport and land there if you lossed a little SA.

...
Click to expand...

You're talking Duke Field. It's actually a base-sized airfield, becoming more and more of a real AFB soon; similar to Indian Springs becoming Creech AFB.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top