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Pilots Often Head to Wrong Airports, Reports Show

Pilots Often Head to Wrong Airports, Reports Show

Old Feb 17, 2014, 9:10 am
  #31  
 
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Originally Posted by DeafFlyer
I don't find that answer satisfying. I meant trained to make absolute sure they are headed for the correct runway.
They are. Sometimes human beings don't follow their training. The low number of landings on unintended runways vs total number of commercial flights shows that this is not a common mistake, but we are never going to completely eliminate human error in any human endeavor.

Last edited by I'mOffOne; Feb 17, 2014 at 9:12 am Reason: makes more sense when I put in the verbs
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Old Feb 18, 2014, 8:54 pm
  #32  
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Many of these landings occur at night.

You have to be a pilot and have flown at night to understand how this can happen (yeah, I have been a pilot and have flown at night). Even with instruments, etc. when you see those inviting lights beckon and you are "very sure"... you can be wrong. Just using visual guidance, you can't tell so much about runway length etc. because you have little to no perspective.

You have to get over your confidence and use the systems in the aircraft, but at the same time you really want to keep your focus on the lights. One of the answers to this issue is the coming of HUD (Heads Up Displays) in civil aircraft.

Again, "often" should be put into perspective - e.g. percentage? Per 100,000? Not so often.
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Old Feb 21, 2014, 11:03 am
  #33  
 
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Just to beat a dead horse (or at least a quiescent one) further:

AVweb published this article on wrong airport airport landings and why pilots do them despite the data available. While it has a slightly general aviation bent (considering the audience for AVweb), it's a good insight into what happens -- lots of biases come into play.

AOPA relates the tale of a 757 landing at the wrong airport in Arizona. While the story is a bit disturbing, the conclusion is that there aren't that many actual wrong-airport landings in the bigger picture of how many flights there are every day.
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Old Feb 21, 2014, 6:14 pm
  #34  
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FWIW, I was once on a CO 737 landing at EWR. We were headed for rwy 4R when at an altitude of a few hundred feet seconds from landing when we swung left and then right in one quick motion and landed on rwy 4L. It was pretty smoothly done and done too quickly to cause any sort of panic. Nobody else seemed to notice! After pulling to the gate I asked the pilot what had happened. He said he was going to the control tower to find out. He was not happy.

Last edited by cblaisd; Feb 21, 2014 at 6:44 pm Reason: Corrected non-standard orthography for the sake of future searching
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Old Feb 22, 2014, 3:24 pm
  #35  
 
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Originally Posted by Xyzzy
FWIW, I was once on a CO 737 landing at EWR. We were headed for rwy 4R when at an altitude of a few hundred feet seconds from landing when we swung left and then right in one quick motion and landed on rwy 4L. It was pretty smoothly done and done too quickly to cause any sort of panic. Nobody else seemed to notice! After pulling to the gate I asked the pilot what had happened. He said he was going to the control tower to find out. He was not happy.
Sometimes the tower screws up and forgets the left/right assignment they give you. Or they change their minds. I was flying into SBA with clearance to 15R. Since I was flying a slow Cessna 172, tower probably forgot that they had cleared me to 15R and then cleared me to 15L while I was on short final aligned to 15R. When I confirmed I was switching to 15L, the tower controller then remembered the runway assignment he had given me originally and kept me headed to 15R. It happens.
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Old Feb 22, 2014, 7:37 pm
  #36  
 
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Originally Posted by Xyzzy
FWIW, I was once on a CO 737 landing at EWR. We were headed for rwy 4R when at an altitude of a few hundred feet seconds from landing when we swung left and then right in one quick motion and landed on rwy 4L. It was pretty smoothly done and done too quickly to cause any sort of panic. Nobody else seemed to notice! After pulling to the gate I asked the pilot what had happened. He said he was going to the control tower to find out. He was not happy.
EWR almost always lands on the outer runway (4R). Very, very rarely you will get a sidestep to 4L and it's almost always because there's not going to be enough separation between you and the aircraft ahead. Usually in that situation tower will direct you to go-around, but if they don't have a departure line for 4L they will tell you to sidestep. The pilot can always refuse a sidestep in this circumstance and go-around if they feel it is too late in the approach for a stable sidestep, so the pilot's irritation was probably more about the lack of spacing on his initial approach to 4R.
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