United Airbus almost lands at wrong airport

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mikecweb

Well-Known Member
Probably a good CRM debrief on this one. Looks like a VERY compressed flight into an airport they probably have never been to.

Repo SEA-BFI probably for an outbound sports charter (White Sox are in town), almost landed at Renton.
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL1848/history/20140810/2205Z/KSEA/KBFI
Screen Shot 2014-08-10 at 6.13.45 PM.png


http://archive-server.liveatc.net/kbfi/KBFI-Aug-10-2014-2230Z.mp3

Audio in the first 30 seconds.
 
Kingairer said:
Never ok, but that's an ultra highworklad flight into an unfamiliar airport that's not typically on your flight schedule. Lots of "threats".
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C'mon now. Maybe lots of threats, but it's not like these guys were at the hold-short line with no idea of their destination, then told by the command post what their airport would be where they were going to just prior to taking the active and had to plan on-the-fly.

I would love to know how much preplanning went into this for familiarty and SA purposes, or if it was a "meh....just request radar vectors." It's not like this crew had no background and experience in aviation before.
 
Kingairer said:
They probably skipped out on the 3 hour briefing before flight in the room with the cool pseudo recliners. Slackasses! ;-)
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:D

I mean, obviously there was no intent here, it was a simple mistake........and even so, since they didn't land then I suppose they technically did nothing wrong other than take a slightly longer route to their destination. But on a "looking back" sort of thing, even if this was a very short flight in a high density area, I do wonder how much preplanning they had.....the back-to-basics stuff they did when they were timebuilding.
 
I made a DOPE visual approach into Offut on my way up from MCI enroute to OMA.

Luckily the controller wouldn't budge when we said we had the airport in site. I'd be sitting behind the keyboard trolling some aviation website all high and mighty.
 
Derg said:
I made a DOPE visual approach into Offut on my way up from MCI enroute to OMA.

Luckily the controller wouldn't budge when we said we had the airport in site. I'd be sitting behind the keyboard trolling some aviation website all high and mighty.
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It happens, and will continue to, with no one immune. Places like RAP/RCA, ELP/BIF, TUS/DMA. And taking the totality of circumstances into account, one situation will always be different from the other. At the same time, we have to be honest with ourselves about how these things occurred or almost occurred, and if that takes a back-to-basics approach to things, then we all learn from that.
 
MikeD said:
It happens, and will continue to, with no one immune. Places like RAP/RCA, ELP/BIF, TUS/DMA. And taking the totality of circumstances into account, one situation will always be different from the other. At the same time, we have to be honest with ourselves about how these things occurred or almost occurred, and if that takes a back-to-basics approach to things, then we all learn from that.
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I pretty much had an arguing match in the plane when a captain thought he was "right downwind" for a particular airport and he was looking at the wrong one.

He was insistent that I called it in sight, I wouldn't and said, "If you turn final for that airport, I'm going to call a go-around and how bad would it be that you not only landed at the wrong damned airport, that you also didn't comply with our go-around policy?"

Anyone can call a go-around at my company.
 
Derg said:
I pretty much had an arguing match in the plane when a captain thought he was "right downwind" for a particular airport and he was looking at the wrong one.

He was insistent that I called it in sight, I wouldn't and said, "If you turn final for that airport, I'm going to call a go-around and how bad would it be that you not only landed at the wrong damned airport, that you also didn't comply with our go-around policy?"

Anyone can call a go-around at my company.
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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?
 
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.
 
MikeD said:
It happens, and will continue to, with no one immune. Places like RAP/RCA, ELP/BIF, TUS/DMA. And taking the totality of circumstances into account, one situation will always be different from the other. At the same time, we have to be honest with ourselves about how these things occurred or almost occurred, and if that takes a back-to-basics approach to things, then we all learn from that.
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Having been into RAP, ELP and TUS on a regular basis I can totally see how an experienced but otherwise tired, or bored, or complacent, unfamiliar crew could walk right into that mistake. Every time I do a visual approach to runway 22 I have to double check myself because the Biggs parallel runway is RIGHT THERE. Heck throw in a hot, gusty, microburst, wind shear filled approach typical for an El Paso afternoon and that's just one more link in a chain to lead you into that mistake.
 
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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I suppose it is hard to sometimes swallow our manly, furry chest beating, Yeager-esque pride. But I'd much rather have my fellow pilot bruise the hell out of my pride that have us both fill out ASAPs and then later do the carpet dance with the CPO and FAA.
 
Lee D said:
Having been into RAP, ELP and TUS on a regular basis I can totally see how an experienced but otherwise tired, or bored, or complacent, unfamiliar crew could walk right into that mistake. Every time I do a visual approach to runway 22 I have to double check myself because the Biggs parallel runway is RIGHT THERE. Heck throw in a hot, gusty, microburst, wind shear filled approach typical for an El Paso afternoon and that's just one more link in a chain to lead you into that mistake.
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ELP/BIF is probably the worst one of the examples. There used to be a HI-ILS 22 IAP to ELP that was similar to the H-VOR or TACAN 26, except the eastern arc took you to the 22 ILS final. Problem was, if the slightest overshoot occurred from arc to final, and you happened to just break out of the WX at that time when you were almost rolled out or about 30 degrees prior, you'd be nearly perfectly aligned with BIF RW 21 and could so easily bite off on it and continue visual, even though the CDI would have a left deflection. Similar at night with a visual there.
 
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.
 
MikeD said:
ELP/BIF is probably the worst one of the examples. There used to be a HI-ILS 22 IAP to ELP that was similar to the H-VOR or TACAN 26, except the eastern arc took you to the 22 ILS final. Problem was, if the slightest overshoot occurred from arc to final, and you happened to just break out of the WX at that time when you were almost rolled out or about 30 degrees prior, you'd be nearly perfectly aligned with BIF RW 21 and could so easily bite off on it and continue visual, even though the CDI would have a left deflection. Similar at night with a visual there.
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I was in BIF several weeks ago; night visual, runway departure end under construction (no approaches, no approach lighting, no PAPI/VASI). Very, very easy to mistake it for ELP, especially when the only runway that sticks out of the city lights is over in ELP. Thankfully we managed to do it properly (built a 5-mile fix in the FMC on final to help), but we were being very careful about identifying the runway number before touchdown.

I can't fault this UAL crew... They made a mistake, but didn't touch down. No harm, no foul.
 
dasleben said:
I was in BIF several weeks ago; night visual, runway departure end under construction (no approaches, no approach lighting, no PAPI/VASI). Very, very easy to mistake it for ELP, especially when the only runway that sticks out of the city lights is over in ELP. Thankfully we managed to do it properly (built a 5-mile fix in the FMC on final to help), but we were being very careful about identifying the runway number before touchdown.
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Completely agree.

I can't fault this UAL crew. They made a mistake, but didn't touch down. No harm, no foul.
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I fault them, as they are the ones at the controls. They made the mistake, even though no foul was really made. Who else would there be to blame? But this isn't a fault them in the sense that they are bad pilots or are bad people, they are simply at fault for the mistake.....they're the ones up front. So hopefully whatever led them up to this can be a lesson learned for them. That's all.

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?

They aren't the first and they won't be the last to do this. Luckily, no foul other than extra burnt fuel. Best kind to learn from....
 
Regardless, you can bet your life a carpet dance at the Big Brown Desk Theater is in their immediate future.
 
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