United Airbus almost lands at wrong airport

MikeD said:
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.
Click to expand...

My understanding, not confirmed, is that the DoD dropped a bunch of HI-penetration approaches several years back in a cost-cutting move. I kind of liked working both the HI-TACAN (15 DME Arc) and HI-ILS (10 DME Arc). Holloman F-15s used to fly that stuff all the time back in the '80s. Now we hardly ever get a request for the HI-TACAN.
 
Honestly, the only way I can see getting the Seattle area airports confused is if you have no idea what you're looking for.

Count the runways. SeaTac has 3, Boeing has 2, Renton has 1, and it's half the length of the others.
 
Last edited:
z987k said:
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.
Click to expand...
Actv>select airport>VFR approach>select runway, verify VNAV CDA set 3* or as appropriate.
 
RDoug said:
My understanding, not confirmed, is that the DoD dropped a bunch of HI-penetration approaches several years back in a cost-cutting move. I kind of liked working both the HI-TACAN (15 DME Arc) and HI-ILS (10 DME Arc). Holloman F-15s used to fly that stuff all the time back in the '80s. Now we hardly ever get a request for the HI-TACAN.
Click to expand...

I used to come practice them often in the 117 or T-38, sometimes even beat the pattern up a bit if I had time. I'd forgotten the HI-ILS was a 10 DME arc, which was another reason it was kind of a gotcha, the arc happened very quick at our penetration speeds from both the radial to the arc, as well as the arc to final, not to mention having to switch freqs from ELP to the ILS in the arc to final, and darn near being already at the FAF by the time you rolled out. The HI-TACAN was a little easier with the larger arc and being single frequency.
 
MikeD said:
The HI-TACAN was a little easier with the larger arc and being single frequency.
Click to expand...

Yeah . . . right up to the point where the Navy guy in training invariably missed the dogleg turn at the VORTAC and headed straight toward the RY22 final. Then it got kind of exciting.
 
z987k said:
Does anyone not do this?
Click to expand...

I don't think I've flown an approach at the new job without.

Last place, after transitioning to jets, almost everyone did. Especially after one of the "we.re teh awesum" crews choose not to, and rolled the scale on the mfd until it was unusable. They made the news. Not only landing at the wrong place, but taxiied back took off again to the proper destination, and didn't tell anyone.

You never want the FAA to find out on ESPN.
 
mikecweb said:
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.
Click to expand...

I'm sure the pilots discussed this mistake after the flight. I imagine an ASAP has been filed... And if there is a trend here, hopefully that program will identify it, and allow other pilots to learn from it. You make a good point about GA though. They don't seem to get this kind of information usually. Hopefully user fees will fix that. *zing *sarcasm :)

Saying that they need to be sent back to school is just as stupid as saying someone who had a crappy landing once on a 4 day should be going back to school. Crap happens, learn from it and move on.
 
No one feels worse about it than they do. They will remember the "we almost landed at the wrong airport" story for the rest of their careers. I'm glad they caught it, or that someone caught it for them. Just remember that we are all susceptible to the same kind of thing, especially when we're doing something a little different that we're used to. Glad everybody's OK.
 
MikeD said:
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.
Click to expand...

No doubt. So I can see it was either one or both of them felt familiar enough with the local area airports to blow it off or they were running behind enough it dropped out of their crosscheck that "hey this is not where we go, let's have a look at the charts." It will be interesting to hear whatever it actually was that happened. Either way, good on whoever caught it before it became a bigger problem.
 
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?
Click to expand...

Times like these I'm glad I fly at my current airline doing basically only JFK/EWR - LAX/SFO. "Hey, is that our airport?" "I dunno, do you see an Ocean right next to it?" ;)
 
CirrusMonkey said:
They even asked clearance if they could clear them VFR. They were told that VFR flight plans from SEA to BFI are not authorized. I wonder what happened?
Click to expand...

I was referring to the incident 10+ years ago at my old shop.

121 Terminal VFR departures are typically listed in op specs if allowed.
 
juxtapilot said:
Saying that they need to be sent back to school is just as stupid as saying someone who had a crappy landing once on a 4 day should be going back to school. Crap happens, learn from it and move on.
Click to expand...

A crappy landing doesn't break FARS, SOP's or endanger the lives of the general flying public.

In the training word these two pilots would have busted a private pilot checkride, instrument rating checkride, commercial checkride, ATP checkride, and type checkride. In each instance the applicant has to have additional training on the area they busted on, and be signed off by a instructor in order to retest.

Some airlines simply wont hire people with training event failures...and your telling me that 2 airline pilots that just busted every checkride known to man doesn't deserve additional training at a private pilot level? Sorry, but this was a clear VMC day in a modern airplane. The work load just is not that high. Inexcusable.
 
T/O w/FSII said:
Sorry, but this was a clear VMC day in a modern airplane. The work load just is not that high. Inexcusable.
Click to expand...

Every accident is a chain of errors. This chain was broken. "BFI your right 3 o'clock 20 miles, report in sight." FO looks right sees an airport at 3 o'clock, "field in sight," "cleared visual approach runway XX BFI."

Good on whoever finally noticed that they were lined up incorrectly.

We can all feel high and mighty, believing that we are somehow immune to similar errors, but that is just a lie to make ourselves feel better. Truth is, we all make errors every single flight, the whole goal is to catch those errors as soon as possible. Sometimes it takes longer than other times to catch the mistake, but they did prior to causing an accident, so live and learn and fly another day.

Also, a clear VMC day in a modern airplane is, in my humble opinion, a significantly higher workload environment. Instead of just staring at the pretty colored screens and needles you now have to look outside and clear, while moving at ~250kts, while getting all your stuff set up from takeoff to landing in a very short amount of time. Airliners don't exactly have the best outward visibility. And when you start looking outside your cross check of all the pretty pink goo that you were looking at drops out a bit, especially once you "know" you have the field in sight. Instead of crucifying the pilots, lets learn something and go forward.
 
flyboy6585 said:
Every accident is a chain of errors. This chain was broken. "BFI your right 3 o'clock 20 miles, report in sight." FO looks right sees an airport at 3 o'clock, "field in sight," "cleared visual approach runway XX BFI."

Good on whoever finally noticed that they were lined up incorrectly.

We can all feel high and mighty, believing that we are somehow immune to similar errors, but that is just a lie to make ourselves feel better. Truth is, we all make errors every single flight, the whole goal is to catch those errors as soon as possible. Sometimes it takes longer than other times to catch the mistake, but they did prior to causing an accident, so live and learn and fly another day.

Also, a clear VMC day in a modern airplane is, in my humble opinion, a significantly higher workload environment. Instead of just staring at the pretty colored screens and needles you now have to look outside and clear, while moving at ~250kts, while getting all your stuff set up from takeoff to landing in a very short amount of time. Airliners don't exactly have the best outward visibility. And when you start looking outside your cross check of all the pretty pink goo that you were looking at drops out a bit, especially once you "know" you have the field in sight. Instead of crucifying the pilots, lets learn something and go forward.
Click to expand...


Oh I agree with you, and I am in no way trying to crucify the pilots. I am just stating that additional training is mandatory in this instance.

But GOD FORBID a pilot ACTUALLY looks outside. I think we just found the root of the problem. Put these guys in a damn cub for 20 hours each with a paper VFR chart and have them bounce around between airports in busy airspace.

Good thing ATC caught it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top