Flight Training - April 2014 - 36

Both aircraft
were making
visual approaches
to an airport they
believed they had identified correctly. It wasn't
until they touched down
that their mistake became
evident.
The question lingers,
however: How does a proficient, professional flight
crew land at the wrong airport? And why does it keep
happening? The answer is
disturbingly short and sweet.
They do it, and it keeps happening, because it's a relatively easy
mistake to make. It's also a mistake that's
fairly easy to avoid, so let's consider two other
instances in which pilots landed at the wrong airport, and see what
led them to misidentify the field until it was too late.
GENERAL AVIATORS MAKE MISTAKES, TOO. A retired airline captain interviewed for this story, who chose to remain anonymous,
told the tale of landing at the wrong airport in south Florida early
in his career. He was flying a Piper Aztec while attending college
and building time toward flying for the airlines. He was to pick up
a passenger in south Florida and return him to Tallahassee, in the
northwestern panhandle of the state. He recalled the details of the
flight clearly, as if the nearly 40 years that have passed between
that day and this were no factor.
"I was cleared to land on Runway 27," he remembered. "I just
drove in and landed-then realized it was the wrong 27."
The mistake is easier to make than one might imagine. The
east coast of south Florida is festooned with airports, nearly all
of which have east/west runways to accommodate the prevailing
wind off the Atlantic Ocean. As the pilot explained his mistake in
retrospect, he brought up that exact point. "It [the airport] had
east/west runways, like everything does down there."
In his case, he was simply not paying attention as closely as he
should have been and failed to pick up on the subtle clues that
would have helped him identify the correct airport with east/west
runways, rather than just any airport with east/west runways.
"It was a real clear day," he stipulated. "That's when these things
happen."
WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. I can attest to that because I too have
landed at the wrong airport. Yes, it's true. I once put the wheels of
a Piper Cherokee down on a runway other than the one on which I
had intended to land. So I know firsthand that it's an easy mistake
to make. I was flying with a private pilot who hadn't flown in 17
years. He was doing what amounted to a very long flight review. Not
much different than starting from scratch, really. The problem was
36 /

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my client was convinced that he
only needed to brush up a bit
when he actually needed
to learn, or re-learn a
significant number of
skills, maneuvers,
and terms that were
not currently in his
mental or physical
tool bag.
After several
hours of review
flights, I assigned
my fellow pilot a
cross-country that
included four stops,
three of which neither of us
had ever flown to before. Rather
than plan the cross-country as I'd
taught him to, he simply wrote the names
and frequencies of various VORs on index
cards, with notes for which radial would
take him to his destination. Unshaken by
my warnings that this was not an appropriate method of planning a cross-country
flight, I decided to let him fly and learn for
himself why planning is important. That
was a poor decision on my part.
My client was completely lost before we
got to the first destination, yet he insisted
we push on to the planned second stop.
I foolishly agreed. Halfway there the
customer was so confused and frustrated
he could no longer fly the airplane. I took
the controls and did my best to calm him
as I navigated without an appropriate
flight plan or navigation log to reference.
When my destination came into sight, I
contacted Boston Center, cancelled flight
following, and contacted the tower. They
cleared me for a straight-in approach.
I should have known something was
wrong when I reported a one-mile final
and the tower said they didn't have me in
sight, but I pressed on. Little did I know
I was landing at an airport with the same
runway alignment that lay several miles
short of my actual destination, on the
same VOR radial.
WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?

Thankfully, none of the four incidents outlined here resulted in injuries, bent metal,
or a collision with opposing traffic in

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Flight Training - April 2014

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