Originally Posted by MADflyer
The pilot did fly the route that was posted and approved at all levels for flight.
That's an assumption from your side, but I have read in other places that the pilots changed the flight plan themselves thinking a mistake was made by flight dispatch ... in other sources is the flight dispatcher in Sweden blamed and the pilots cleared .
Who knows ?
http://www.flightglobal.com have just published an article about this incident here:
http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles...ntiago+de.html
Suspicion over the cause of the error has focused on the Scandinavian flight-planning operation. The International Air Transport Association codes for the two airports are similar - Santiago de Compostela's code is SCQ while Seville's is SVQ - and the carrier believes this might have led to the mistake.
"We think that, because of this, the pilot thought there had been a change of plan and instead went to Seville," says Spanair.
Not only is similar the IATA code but also the cities names "santiago" "sevilla" , so perhaps the swedish pilots didn't knew of santiago and assumed sevilla , because that they changed the flight plan and flew to the city they knew ...
Did somebody talked about "cultural differences" ?