Southwest Airline Plane Lands at Wrong Airport...

[bodecea]

A Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago's Midway International Airport was scheduled to land Sunday night at Branson Airport in southwest Missouri. Instead, the Boeing 737-700 touched down at Taney County's M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport, which is about 7 miles away and has a significantly shorter runway.

The plane is expected to take off between noon and 1 p.m. ET after likely dumping fuel to lighten its weight and get enough power to take off on the short runway, Berndt told CNN.

The Taney County airport doesn't usually handle big jets. Its runway is about half the length of the Branson Airport -- 3,738 feet, to Branson's 7,140 feet.

As a result of the short runway, the pilot had to do a lot of heavy braking as soon as the jetliner touched down.

Without the firm foot on the brakes, the plane could have overshot the end of the runway, tumbled down an embankment and onto U.S. Highway 65.

Southwest Airlines plane lands at wrong Missouri airport - CNN.com

If I were a passenger, I think I would just rent a car and drive the rest of the way. According to the article, it isn't but about 7 miles to the correct place.

Night...runways not that far from each other? Not as much of an impossibility as some may think.

 

[Kondor3]

Will this be blamed on... The Republicans The Sequester The partial shutdown of the government The Republicans... I put the GOP down twice to give the Libs an excuse.

< snicker >

 

[Sunshine]

A Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago's Midway International Airport was scheduled to land Sunday night at Branson Airport in southwest Missouri. Instead, the Boeing 737-700 touched down at Taney County's M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport, which is about 7 miles away and has a significantly shorter runway.

The plane is expected to take off between noon and 1 p.m. ET after likely dumping fuel to lighten its weight and get enough power to take off on the short runway, Berndt told CNN.

The Taney County airport doesn't usually handle big jets. Its runway is about half the length of the Branson Airport -- 3,738 feet, to Branson's 7,140 feet.

As a result of the short runway, the pilot had to do a lot of heavy braking as soon as the jetliner touched down.

Without the firm foot on the brakes, the plane could have overshot the end of the runway, tumbled down an embankment and onto U.S. Highway 65.

Southwest Airlines plane lands at wrong Missouri airport - CNN.com

If I were a passenger, I think I would just rent a car and drive the rest of the way. According to the article, it isn't but about 7 miles to the correct place.

Night...runways not that far from each other? Not as much of an impossibility as some may think.

I was going to rent a car and drive home from Louisville once when the weather was so bad. That was 4 hours away. But it cleared up enough that I could tolerate it.

 

[Sunshine]

If passengers had been apprised of the situation, I can't think any rational person would have wanted to take off in that plane on that runway. I wouldn't have. I mean, the airline could have driven them the 7 miles to the other airport. And probably should have due to the risk involved.

 

[Pogo]

But, don't they do instrument landings? If so, wouldn't that keep this from happening? Maybe I have too much faith in instruments.

It's prudent to have an instrument approach plugged in as a back up when you're shooting a visual approach, especially after sundown. Many companies include this as a procedure versus a technique. On the pilot boards, this is being severely critiqued.

This may seem cut and dry. The critiques by my fellow pilots may be premature. The FAA will come out with a finding soon and Southwest Airline will release a statement once their lawyers scrub the text.

I'm thankful the NTSB will not be involved. I've flown out of this airport a few times. There is no overrun option. If you go off the end of the runway, you are in deep kimchee.

What a great idea -- a landing strip that ends at a road. What could possibly go wrong?

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfQwDizpRo"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfQwDizpRo[/ame]

 

[Sunshine]

But, don't they do instrument landings? If so, wouldn't that keep this from happening? Maybe I have too much faith in instruments.

It's prudent to have an instrument approach plugged in as a back up when you're shooting a visual approach, especially after sundown. Many companies include this as a procedure versus a technique. On the pilot boards, this is being severely critiqued.

This may seem cut and dry. The critiques by my fellow pilots may be premature. The FAA will come out with a finding soon and Southwest Airline will release a statement once their lawyers scrub the text.

I'm thankful the NTSB will not be involved. I've flown out of this airport a few times. There is no overrun option. If you go off the end of the runway, you are in deep kimchee.

What a great idea -- a landing strip that ends at a road. What could possibly go wrong?

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfQwDizpRo"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfQwDizpRo[/ame]

You have not been in very many airports. The problem was not the runway. The problem was the pilot who landed on the WRONG runway.

I am fairly certain that a runway for a 747 is 5,000 feet long. That's a mile long runway for a plane that large. This is the reason you cannot take whatever flight you want out of any airport in the nation. They all serve different needs.

 

[martybegan]

What a great idea -- a landing strip that ends at a road. What could possibly go wrong?

Evidently you have never been on the Grand Central Parkway by Laguardia Airport.

 

[Sunshine]

What a great idea -- a landing strip that ends at a road. What could possibly go wrong?

Evidently you have never been on the Grand Central Parkway by Laguardia Airport.

Or Nashville, or Dallas Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City, or JFK, or Philadelphia, or Washington Reagan, or LAX, or Hong Kong, or Beijing, or or or.........too many to name. The urban sprawl has caught up with most airports. Everywhere. They pretty much all have a runway that ends near a road or street. Only one I can recall that doesn't is Ottawa. But maybe I was just inattentive.

In Nashville, part of one runway is an overpass of the street below. I'm thinking OKC is as well. but it's been a long time. I could have it mixed up with another.

 

[Pogo]

What a great idea -- a landing strip that ends at a road. What could possibly go wrong?

Evidently you have never been on the Grand Central Parkway by Laguardia Airport.

Uh- yeah I have.

I didn't say it doesn't exist -- I know of a few others too. I said it's a "great idea". It was also an excuse to post the St. Maarten video. I think you missed the point by a somewhat wider berth than the plane in the video.

 

[blastoff]

What a great idea -- a landing strip that ends at a road. What could possibly go wrong?

Evidently you have never been on the Grand Central Parkway by Laguardia Airport.

Or Nashville, or Dallas Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City, or JFK, or Philadelphia, or Washington Reagan, or LAX, or Hong Kong, or Beijing, or or or.........too many to name. The urban sprawl has caught up with most airports. Everywhere. They pretty much all have a runway that ends near a road or street. Only one I can recall that doesn't is Ottawa. But maybe I was just inattentive.

In Nashville, part of one runway is an overpass of the street below. I'm thinking OKC is as well. but it's been a long time. I could have it mixed up with another.

I'll see all those and raise you one Midway Airport in Chicago. It's one mile square, bounded by 4 streets, avenues chock full of businesses and private homes that abut it and spread out for miles around it.

A few winters back an inbound Southwest flight couldn't stop on an icy runway and slid out into the street killing, I think it was, a kid who was riding in a passing car that got flattened.

MDW and the old airport in Hong Kong are the scariest I've ever landed at . In HK you actually decended down through a canyon of high rise buildings on either side of the plane, right outside your window and you could see people in their apartments, offices, and whatnot.

 

[JamesMillman]

Maybe they wanted to get a bite at their favorite airport restaurant?

 

[Pogo]

Evidently you have never been on the Grand Central Parkway by Laguardia Airport.

Or Nashville, or Dallas Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City, or JFK, or Philadelphia, or Washington Reagan, or LAX, or Hong Kong, or Beijing, or or or.........too many to name. The urban sprawl has caught up with most airports. Everywhere. They pretty much all have a runway that ends near a road or street. Only one I can recall that doesn't is Ottawa. But maybe I was just inattentive.

In Nashville, part of one runway is an overpass of the street below. I'm thinking OKC is as well. but it's been a long time. I could have it mixed up with another.

I'll see all those and raise you one Midway Airport in Chicago. It's one mile square, bounded by 4 streets, avenues chock full of businesses and private homes that abut it and spread out for miles around it.

A few winters back an inbound Southwest flight couldn't stop on an icy runway and slid out into the street killing, I think it was, a kid who was riding in a passing car that got flattened.

MDW and the old airport in Hong Kong are the scariest I've ever landed at . In HK you actually decended down through a canyon of high rise buildings on either side of the plane, right outside your window and you could see people in their apartments, offices, and whatnot.

I remember that Midway incident. That's exactly why we (usually) locate airports outside of town. Then we build a runway and a road as a virtual intersection.

 

[Pogo]

It's prudent to have an instrument approach plugged in as a back up when you're shooting a visual approach, especially after sundown. Many companies include this as a procedure versus a technique. On the pilot boards, this is being severely critiqued.

This may seem cut and dry. The critiques by my fellow pilots may be premature. The FAA will come out with a finding soon and Southwest Airline will release a statement once their lawyers scrub the text.

I'm thankful the NTSB will not be involved. I've flown out of this airport a few times. There is no overrun option. If you go off the end of the runway, you are in deep kimchee.

What a great idea -- a landing strip that ends at a road. What could possibly go wrong?

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfQwDizpRo"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfQwDizpRo[/ame]

You have not been in very many airports. The problem was not the runway. The problem was the pilot who landed on the WRONG runway.

I am fairly certain that a runway for a 747 is 5,000 feet long. That's a mile long runway for a plane that large. This is the reason you cannot take whatever flight you want out of any airport in the nation. They all serve different needs.

At least sixty or seventy that I can recall. Is that very many?

 

[Sunshine]

Evidently you have never been on the Grand Central Parkway by Laguardia Airport.

Or Nashville, or Dallas Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City, or JFK, or Philadelphia, or Washington Reagan, or LAX, or Hong Kong, or Beijing, or or or.........too many to name. The urban sprawl has caught up with most airports. Everywhere. They pretty much all have a runway that ends near a road or street. Only one I can recall that doesn't is Ottawa. But maybe I was just inattentive.

In Nashville, part of one runway is an overpass of the street below. I'm thinking OKC is as well. but it's been a long time. I could have it mixed up with another.

I'll see all those and raise you one Midway Airport in Chicago. It's one mile square, bounded by 4 streets, avenues chock full of businesses and private homes that abut it and spread out for miles around it.

A few winters back an inbound Southwest flight couldn't stop on an icy runway and slid out into the street killing, I think it was, a kid who was riding in a passing car that got flattened.

MDW and the old airport in Hong Kong are the scariest I've ever landed at . In HK you actually decended down through a canyon of high rise buildings on either side of the plane, right outside your window and you could see people in their apartments, offices, and whatnot.

I don't believe I've ever been to Chicago by plane, only by train. The new airport in HK is right on the sea. I saw a show about it a while back. It seems they dredged up the foundation for in from the South China Sea, which essentially means it has no foundation. It WILL roll off into the sea. As of yet, they have not figured out a way to fix it. Point is that the runways in the new HK airport terminate at the sea.

I don't get people on here who are razzing on the runway. The pilot landed at the wrong airport. The runway he landed on is grossly adequate for the size planes that land on it, even if it terminates at a roadway.

But then I'm guessing it's the same crowd that thinks guns kill people. Not stupid shooters. Now runways kill people. Not stupid pilots.

We have an airport here in Western KY that until just a few years ago had a grass runway. The airport serves the type of planes that land there.

 

[Kondor3]

Or Nashville, or Dallas Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City, or JFK, or Philadelphia, or Washington Reagan, or LAX, or Hong Kong, or Beijing, or or or.........too many to name. The urban sprawl has caught up with most airports. Everywhere. They pretty much all have a runway that ends near a road or street. Only one I can recall that doesn't is Ottawa. But maybe I was just inattentive.

In Nashville, part of one runway is an overpass of the street below. I'm thinking OKC is as well. but it's been a long time. I could have it mixed up with another.

I'll see all those and raise you one Midway Airport in Chicago. It's one mile square, bounded by 4 streets, avenues chock full of businesses and private homes that abut it and spread out for miles around it.

A few winters back an inbound Southwest flight couldn't stop on an icy runway and slid out into the street killing, I think it was, a kid who was riding in a passing car that got flattened.

MDW and the old airport in Hong Kong are the scariest I've ever landed at . In HK you actually decended down through a canyon of high rise buildings on either side of the plane, right outside your window and you could see people in their apartments, offices, and whatnot.

I remember that Midway incident. That's exactly why we (usually) locate airports outside of town. Then we build a runway and a road as a virtual intersection.

The wife and I were coming back from a first-ever 5-night cruise and landed at MDW on the other runway shortly after that (737?) overran the runway and we actually saw the plane-meets-car accident from a couple of blocks distance, making our way home. Scary stuff, but it's bound to happen from time to time, when you plant a postage stamp -sized mile-square airport in the middle of a big city and keep using it years after it should have been retired and bulldozed over. Something of a suitable size for the aircraft and traffic of the 1930s - embedded deep in a city - should not have survived the age of prop-liners.

Long ago, back in the days when 'props' were king and MDW was in its heyday before jets forced a shift to ORD, every so often, a DC4 or DC7 or Connie would go down on the approaches to MDW and hose a city block or so of brownstones and some of the residents.

Scary stuff.

MDW is a great airfield in good weather with a decent headwind and small to mid-sized craft, but in less optimal conditions, well... it gets a little scary... in the plane, or under it...

 

[williepete]

Feisty comment section after the article:



Opinion: Land on the wrong runway? It's easy - CNN.com

Land on the wrong runway? It's easy
By Robert Goyer

updated 1:59 PM EST, Tue January 14, 2014

Editor's note: Robert Goyer is the editor-in-chief of Flying magazine.

(CNN) -- After a Boeing 747 Dreamlifter landed at a small airport in Wichita a couple of months ago -- the pilot having mistaken the runway for a much longer and wider one in a similar orientation at a nearby military base -- I made the prediction that it wasn't the last time we'd see such a blunder.

I just didn't think it would happen again so soon.

But on Sunday, a Southwest 737 crew mistook a runway at a small local airport in Hollister, Missouri, for the much larger runway at nearby, Branson Airport, and landed at the small strip by mistake. To make matters more hair-raising, the 737 touched down on a relatively short runway even for light planes, never mind for airliners. To their credit, the crew members of the Boeing jet got it stopped short of the end of the runway, where an embankment separated it from U.S. Highway 65, without doing any damage to passengers or the plane.

The question arises: "How did a professionally trained crew manage to screw up so badly?" The answer is it's very easy to do. Take the accidental landing of a C-17 at a small Florida airport in 2012, for example. The crew's intended airport was MacDill Air Force Base, but it instead touched down the giant jet on the much, much shorter, 100-foot-wide runway a few miles away. Military personnel had to work for hours after the mix-up to lighten the airplane's load so it could take off from the short strip.

The fact is that any pilot with a lot of experience who claims to have never at least lined up to land at a runway other than the intended one is probably fibbing. I've been flying everything from light propeller planes to big jets for more than 30 years, and I've aimed for the wrong runway three times and a really big taxiway on a different occasion.

The problem is there are two distinct modes of operating an airplane, by reference to the instruments and by visual reference. With very, very few exceptions, every flight ends with the pilot turning off the autopilot (if it was engaged), taking physical command of the plane through the flight and power controls, "acquiring" the runway visually and landing. Sometimes that process happens in the last 10 seconds of a flight, sometimes in the last five minutes.

It's that visual acquisition of the landing runway that's the trap. When pilots see what they believe is the right runway, they're going to land there unless some big alarm goes off in their head. It's simply human nature, and pilots are humans. They proceed to disregard the instruments and simply "hand fly" the airplane to a landing, that is if the co-pilot doesn't alert them to the flub.

All the while the navigation instruments "know" the plane is headed to the wrong airport, but the pilots don't pay attention because in their mind they've already found the right runway, so why even bother to look at the instruments?

Why don't more of these wrong airport episodes end in disaster? It's luck that most of them don't. Tragically, there are exceptions. In 2006, a regional jet took off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Kentucky. The runway was too short and the jet crashed, killing 49 people in the process.

Landing at the wrong airport or choosing the wrong runway can be catastrophic.

Had the 747 in Wichita tried landing on a runway as short as the one the much smaller 737 touched down on over the weekend, I don't think it could have stopped in time to avoid going off the end and at the very least wrecking the airplane. Modern airliners have two things going for them — great brakes and powerful reverse thrusters — and in the case of both the 737 and the 747 before it, it was a good thing they did. I wasn't there to witness either event, but I'd be shocked if the smell of superheated brake pads wasn't in the air.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Robert Goyer.

 

[blastoff]

For anyone ever landing at Midway in the summer here's a handy distraction that's kept me from thinking about landing on houses and cars that are quickly disappearing below the aircraft as you come roaring in on final approach. That area of the near sw suburbs of Chicago has got to be the above ground pool capital of the world. They're seemingly everywhere in backyards, so try counting the shiny blue pool circles and before you know it you'll be safely on the ground.

 

[bodecea]

Evidently you have never been on the Grand Central Parkway by Laguardia Airport.

Or Nashville, or Dallas Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City, or JFK, or Philadelphia, or Washington Reagan, or LAX, or Hong Kong, or Beijing, or or or.........too many to name. The urban sprawl has caught up with most airports. Everywhere. They pretty much all have a runway that ends near a road or street. Only one I can recall that doesn't is Ottawa. But maybe I was just inattentive.

In Nashville, part of one runway is an overpass of the street below. I'm thinking OKC is as well. but it's been a long time. I could have it mixed up with another.

I'll see all those and raise you one Midway Airport in Chicago. It's one mile square, bounded by 4 streets, avenues chock full of businesses and private homes that abut it and spread out for miles around it.

A few winters back an inbound Southwest flight couldn't stop on an icy runway and slid out into the street killing, I think it was, a kid who was riding in a passing car that got flattened.

MDW and the old airport in Hong Kong are the scariest I've ever landed at . In HK you actually decended down through a canyon of high rise buildings on either side of the plane, right outside your window and you could see people in their apartments, offices, and whatnot.

Never flew into Hong Kong...but I heard the stories.....rep as one of the worst.

 

[Sunshine]

Or Nashville, or Dallas Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City, or JFK, or Philadelphia, or Washington Reagan, or LAX, or Hong Kong, or Beijing, or or or.........too many to name. The urban sprawl has caught up with most airports. Everywhere. They pretty much all have a runway that ends near a road or street. Only one I can recall that doesn't is Ottawa. But maybe I was just inattentive.

In Nashville, part of one runway is an overpass of the street below. I'm thinking OKC is as well. but it's been a long time. I could have it mixed up with another.

I'll see all those and raise you one Midway Airport in Chicago. It's one mile square, bounded by 4 streets, avenues chock full of businesses and private homes that abut it and spread out for miles around it.

A few winters back an inbound Southwest flight couldn't stop on an icy runway and slid out into the street killing, I think it was, a kid who was riding in a passing car that got flattened.

MDW and the old airport in Hong Kong are the scariest I've ever landed at . In HK you actually decended down through a canyon of high rise buildings on either side of the plane, right outside your window and you could see people in their apartments, offices, and whatnot.

Never flew into Hong Kong...but I heard the stories.....rep as one of the worst.

Maybe the old one. But the new one is state of the art. Sad it has no foundation and will fall off into the South China Sea one day.

 

[Pogo]

For anyone ever landing at Midway in the summer here's a handy distraction that's kept me from thinking about landing on houses and cars that are quickly disappearing below the aircraft as you come roaring in on final approach. That area of the near sw suburbs of Chicago has got to be the above ground pool capital of the world. They're seemingly everywhere in backyards, so try counting the shiny blue pool circles and before you know it you'll be safely on the ground.

When I'm circling I like to count baseball fields. It's a distinct shape that looks like nothing else. I've done 40s and 50s on some flights.