Oops, must have been a visual approach.....

[BobR]

Delta Plane Mistakenly Lands at South Dakota Air Force Base

More than 100 Delta passengers on board a flight bound for Rapid City, South Dakota got an unexpected surprise Thursday night when their plane mistakenly landed at an Air Force Base, about five miles north of the aircraft's intended target.

"This was a gross breach of the security of our Airfield that present[ed] a potential threat to both our Airmen and our resources," Boswell added....

According to Boswell, the two runways are located 5 miles from each other and are oriented in roughly the same direction. However, the runway at Ellsworth is 13,500 feet long and 300 feet wide and marked at the threshold with a large "13" number, while the runway at Rapid City Regional Airport is only 8,701 feet long and only 150 feet wide and marked with a large "14."

"Incidents like this occur when pilots fail to execute the basic measures of airmanship," said Boswell.

Good thing this is a touchy-feely Air Force these days, Gen. Curtis LeMay would have had them all thrown in jail....forever. 

http://abcnews.go.com/US/delta-plane-mistakenly-lands-south-dakota-air-force/story?id=40444218


bob

[dogmush]

This happened in Tampa a couple years ago, only the other way.  A C17 put down at a podunk regional airport instead of Macdill AFB.  Faces were red all around.

[French G.]

Watching the C-17 get out of the 4000 ft runway was neat. That doesn't always end well, little airports don't always have tarmac rated to hold the heavy planes.

[Ben]

Watching the C-17 get out of the 4000 ft runway was neat. That doesn't always end well, little airports don't always have tarmac rated to hold the heavy planes.

On the other end of the scale, we landed our Seawolf at VAFB on a few occasions, and used about the first 1% of the runway (built for the space shuttle). You could just about read a book before we rolled to the first taxiway. 

[Brad Johnson]

Pilot error aside, if a commercial flight is inbound with an active transponder how the hell does someone at approach control not notice a five mile error in flight path?

Attention... attention jamisjockey... jamisjockey to the white courtesy phone....

Brad

[MechAg94]

Col. Gentry Boswell, 28th Bomb Wing commander at Ellsworth Air Force Base, told ABC News that while the Ellsworth Radar Approach control does control the high-level airspace for approximately 40 miles from the base, the Air Traffic Control Towers at each runway control all aircraft in their local area which is a 5-mile radius up to and including 5,900 feet.

"The Radar Approach Control gave instructions to the Delta flight in this instance and pointed out BOTH runways to the flight crew to alleviate any issues with identification of the correct airport and the crew replied they had the landing runway at Rapid City Regional Airport in sight," said Boswell.

So someone knew they were coming.  Can they not tell they are 5 miles off target?  I would have thought approach to the wrong airport would be something they would recognize. 

[seeker_two]

Good thing this is a touchy-feely Air Force these days, Gen. Curtis LeMay would have had them all thrown in jail....forever. 

http://abcnews.go.com/US/delta-plane-mistakenly-lands-south-dakota-air-force/story?id=40444218


bob

LeMay would have shot them down himself....

[Fly320s]

Pilot error aside, if a commercial flight is inbound with an active transponder how the hell does someone at approach control not notice a five mile error in flight path?

Attention... attention jamisjockey... jamisjockey to the white courtesy phone....

Brad

I think once the flight is handed off to the tower, the approach controller no longer tracks the flight. Or, if the flight cancelled IFR services, then the flight track info would drop out of the system and the approach controller wouldn't see it anymore. In either case, it is the pilots' responsibility to find the right airport.

[BobR]

On the other end of the scale, we landed our Seawolf at VAFB on a few occasions, and used about the first 1% of the runway (built for the space shuttle). You could just about read a book before we rolled to the first taxiway. 

We loved doing pilot training flights to Vandenberg in P3s. We could do a landing to a full stop, an aborted take off and then proceed to take off on the remaining runway to go around and do it again all without ever leaving the active runway :)

bob

[41magsnub]

That nearly happened on a flight my Dad was on in the 80's heading into Great Falls, during the day.  New Delta pilot to the airport.  Dad was looking out the window while they were on approach and was thinking "this looks wrong".  He'd know, he had his license at the time and flew in and out of that airport a lot.  The 727 suddenly applied power and and turned away from Malmstrom (back when there was a KC-135 squadron there and the runways were still open).   Oops.  Total opposite ends of town too.

[Regolith]

On the other end of the scale, we landed our Seawolf at VAFB on a few occasions, and used about the first 1% of the runway (built for the space shuttle). You could just about read a book before we rolled to the first taxiway. 

I did not know that submarines could fly...

[never_retreat]

I remember leaving Honolulu thinking that we taxied for about an hour before taking off. I don't know how big that runway was.

[Ben]

I did not know that submarines could fly...

Heh. The other Seawolf. Cheezy video here:

http://www.seawolfamphib.com/Quality%20Amphibians%20Home%20Page.htm

Ours was one of two special builds for the Air Force with redundant everything, which made them a pain in the ass for the mechanics. The Air Force used them for some SOCOM stuff, but then decided they didn't work well for it (because they're loud and slow, especially with all the hardpoints full of drop tanks and stuff), so they gave them to us. I worked in one of them for eleven years until we lost our budget (thanks Obama your first year in office!). Then SOCOM/SORDAC decided they wanted it back. Then they remembered why they got rid of it. Now it's being used by the State of Maine forestry division.  

[Regolith]

Heh. The other Seawolf. Cheezy video here:

http://www.seawolfamphib.com/Quality%20Amphibians%20Home%20Page.htm

Ours was one of two special builds for the Air Force with redundant everything, which made them a pain in the ass for the mechanics. The Air Force used them for some SOCOM stuff, but then decided they didn't work well for it (because they're loud and slow, especially with all the hardpoints full of drop tanks and stuff), so they gave them to us. I worked in one of them for eleven years until we lost our budget (thanks Obama your first year in office!). Then SOCOM/SORDAC decided they wanted it back. Then they remembered why they got rid of it. Now it's being used by the State of Maine forestry division. 

Interesting. Never heard of it, and a wiki search turned up nothing. Guess not too many of them were made, especially considering the janky late-90s era website...

[TommyGunn]

I did not know that submarines could fly...

[MillCreek]

The Seawolf looks an awful lot like a Lake amphibian.

[Ben]

The Seawolf looks an awful lot like a Lake amphibian.

It is. Different version for gov/mil.

[Jamisjockey]

Pilot error aside, if a commercial flight is inbound with an active transponder how the hell does someone at approach control not notice a five mile error in flight path?

Attention... attention jamisjockey... jamisjockey to the white courtesy phone....

Brad

At Five miles, he'd be on tower frequency.  What time of day was it?  
Landing speed of a commercial airliner is about 120-150 KIA...so that's about 2 1/2 minutes flight time.

When I was KEFD, we were 7 miles from KHOU and on several occasions aircraft tried to mistake our runways for theirs off the visual.  Landing 30 at HOU, EFD is about 2 miles off the flight path.  

This is me running visuals into IAD this week
http://archive-server.liveatc.net/kiad/KIAD-App-IADFE-Jul-08-2016-1100Z.mp3

[Jamisjockey]

Go to google earth and look at the orientation of the two runways.  For the pilot to hit Ellsworth Ry 15 by mistake means they were coming in from the north, and ellsworth would have been the closer of the two runways.  I bet they nosed it over and it was less than a minute of flight time taking them off their path to the runway.
The controllers probably had little time to react.  And in the tower, typical protocol is to allow an aircraft to land because it might be an emergency of some type forcing them to the wrong runway.
This one appears to be all on the pilots.

[Fly320s]

I blame ATC.  Always and just because.

[Jamisjockey]

I blame ATC.  Always and just because.

We had a pilot get his panties in a twist a few weeks ago because he got with a skydiving plane.  Called the facility and insisted that there be an investigation.
Well,....turns out that when the controller asked him what his on-course direct destination would be, instead of staying on the vector he was on...he turned on course which put him together with the jumpers.  Oops guess who got a PD? 

And then there's the ASH pilot who got sent around two days in a row because the same Final trainee (not me!) ran him too tight...he rightfully called. 
FTR after 4 weeks of Finals training I have 0 go arounds.

[Devonai]

My base shares runways with BIA, so we wouldn't notice a problem until Airman Snuffy is facing down an A320 with his M4. :D

[Jamisjockey]

My base shares runways with BIA, so we wouldn't notice a problem until Airman Snuffy is facing down an A320 with his M4. :D

My first tower was NYL (Yuma, AZ).  Joint use field.  We had a cessna declare a medical emergency right after he landed, said he had blood coming from his ear.  And he revealed he was flying one of the El Toro flying club aircraft, and requested to come to the military side because he was an active duty Gunny. He pulls up on the transient ramp and some dumb *expletive deleted*ck Lcpl MP yanks him out of the aircraft and prones him out.  Meanwhile, ARFF is rolling an ambulance for him.  The ARFF crew chief of the day just happened to be their OIC, a WO4.  He had the MP doing pushups on the ramp shortly thereafter. 

[Devonai]

If the Base Defense Operations Center (or Marine Corp equivalent) failed to inform LCpl Snuffy snoozing on the ramp that this was happening, I hesitate to point blame at him.