Southwest Airlines lands at wrong Branson Airport

[moodychief]

For those of you who have landed at Point Lookout. I guess the jokes about Southwest pilots doing carrier landings are true.

http://www.ky3.com/news/local/southwest-flight-lands-at-wrong-airport-in-branson/-/21048998/23895418/-/mrx15ez/-/index.html

[N201MKTurbo]

I bet there will be pilots lining up to fly that thing out of there.

They will need a waiver to take off without a balanced field length. What a hoot short field takeoff in a Boeing!

I feel bad for the captain. I hope he has another career to fall back on.....

[jetdriven]

They dont necessarily fire you for that stuff. A lot of it depends on previous incident history and humbleness at the hearing.

[The-sky-captain]

Short with drop offs on both ends, those boys are lucky they didn't make matters much worse. How were they able to stop when they were expecting a runway twice that length?

[DonMuncy]

I may be wrong, but a cursory look indicated that plane may need almost 5000 feet to land. Can that be right.

How much wt will they have to offload to get it out. That runway is 3700+ feet.

[scottfromiowa]

That's frigging amazing. Glad thrust reversal and brakes all worked. Nice to make a mistake and not bend metal or injure folks...

Hope someone gets good video of departure.

[scottfromiowa]

I may be wrong, but a cursory look indicated that plane may need almost 5000 feet to land. Can that be right.

How much wt will they have to offload to get it out. That runway is 3700+ feet.

More than I did after my coffee?

[triple8s]

Guess SW will boast " Service at two airports into Branson, but only one departing" lol

[1964-M20E]

Years ago a TACA airlines 737 landed in the grass near a levee in New Orlenas East near the NASA Michoud assembly facility fuel starvation I believe it was a dead stick landing.  A few weeks later they flew the 737 out of there and landed at the original destination New Orlenas int. MSY.

 

I'm not heavy flyer but minimum fuel and two people the 737 should jump off the ground pretty quickly.  I guess SW will be paying to resurface the runway. 

[Jeff_S]

That's twice in a few months...remember Wichita late last year?  I thought all scheduled airliners flew the ILS even if they were doing visual, if for no other reason than to avoid this kind of thing.

[Mooneymite]

I may be wrong, but a cursory look indicated that plane may need almost 5000 feet to land. Can that be right.

How much wt will they have to offload to get it out. That runway is 3700+ feet.

Runway required numbers for part 121 dispatch are conservative and make assumptions such as the 50' obstacle, touching down 1500' drown the approach end, no credit for TR's, etc. The actual stopping distance can be significantly shorter.

Similarly, for takeoff, the numbers for dispatch assume a myriad of worst case factors. Actual distances are much shorter. I suspect the ferry flight out will be dispatched on a ferry permit and under part 91 rules.

As a passenger, you wouldn't want it any other way. As a pilot, it's nice to be operating in a comfortable envelope. Military pilots are sometimes required to operate much closer to actual conditions.

[moodychief]

Last week an Allegiant flight from Florida to Springfield, MO landed and announced welcome to Springfield. One problem...they were at Tulsa!! After the fact, the company stated thy were diverted due to weather. I wonder why the front and back end crew didn't know they diverted since they both made Springfield announcements. This one didn't get as much attention since they landed at a bigger airport.

[chrisk]

How does this sort of thing happen?   Flightaware shows the path (sort of).  I'm wondering if ATC lined the flight up for a GPS 14 approach by sending the plane to WUTIB, then the tower gives a visual  and they turn shortly before WUTIB.    PLK is right on the path.  The pilots see PLK and land. 

[Mooneymite]

I'm wondering if ATC lined the flight up for a GPS 14 approach by sending the plane to WUTIB, then the tower gives a visual and they turn shortly before WUTIB. PLK is right on the path.

Yes, it is the small print in the ATC handbook:

"The controller shall give the pilot a long series of confusing vectors until the crew is hoplessly lost, line him up with the wrong airport and immediately clear him for the visual."

:-)

[timpercarpio]

Any basic GPS would show them several miles from their intended airport, or an iPad with ForeFlight would do the same. Maybe all airline pilots should have an iPad as standard equipment. Having said that, those guys did an amazing job!

[Mooneymite]

Any basic GPS would show them several miles from their intended airport, or an iPad with ForeFlight would do the same. Maybe all airline pilots should have an iPad as standard equipment. Having said that, those guys did an amazing job!

 

Most Part 121 airliners have excellent navigation displays.  The problem is pilots don't look at them once the attention gets focused on a visual approach.  Landing at the wrong airport rarely takes place in IMC.  It is a VMC "lookin' out the window problem.

 

Can happen with our iPad's just as easily.

[chrisk]

Actually playing with this a bit more, if ATC turned him at REEDS instead, he would have overflown PLK.   PLK has runway 12, which is pretty closely aligned to runway 14 at BBG.    The airports are only about 5 miles apart, which is reasonably close, given the runway is over a mile long.   I'd like to think I wouldn't ever make this mistake, but I could see it happening.

[alex]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cd8_1389564655

[flyboy0681]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cd8_1389564655

 

Here's the story behind this "diversion".

 

http://avherald.com/h?article=46d32419

[1964-M20E]

I almost went to Hobby instead of Ellington once.  Hobby was lined up perfectly with my flight path Ellington was off my left wing, thank you tower.  I do have a reasonable question to ask the pilots if you were on a visual approach didn’t the whole airport look somewhat smaller that you’d expect to be landing at?  I’ve made landing at airports where the big boys fly and those runways are quite big compared to what we normally land at.

[DonMuncy]

I have never landed at the wrong airport, but came close once at Shreveport (thanks tower), but I know how easy it would be to do. I think every pilot considers landing an important event. Once "the" airport is identified, ones focus goes to landing the plane, not checking to see if the airport is the correct one.  

[Marauder]

Since this was a night landing, you would have thought the runway lights might have given these guys a clue that they were lined up to the wrong runway.I would have thought you can pick out the difference between a MALSF and MIRL or a PAPI versus a VASI system... Were they supposed to land on 14 and landed on 12? I could see where that could have been a bit confusing.

 

Or perhaps the clue should have been when they had to click to make the lights come on

[jeckford]

My hat is off to those guys even if they did land at the wrong airport.

I fly my M20J regularly to Branson and recently sswitched from KPLK to Branson West (KFWB) due to it being an easier airport to land.

KPLK is 3700 ft with steep drop offs on either end.  It literally sits on top of a plateau and gets some descent crosswinds.  All of my recent go-arounds (2) have been at this airport.  It would not try to land there at night or in IFR.

 

Granted I am only a 350 hr pilot and not a professional but to land a 737 at night...safely...is nothing short of impressive.

[Mooneymite]

I've had several close calls where I almost went for the wrong airport.  In Navy advanced flight training, they'd have you do a non-precision approach to Corpus Christi International, then allow you to go visual about a mile short of the missed approach point.  As the instructor very well knew, the aircraft would be in a perfect location to make a landing at a closed airport (Cabanis, I think).  I had been warned, but lots of guys took the bait.

 

Because I've had some close calls, I always follow the statement, "I've never landed at the wrong airport", with the word "yet".  A lot of pilots with a lot more hours and experience than I have done it.  I just haven't done it "yet".

[N201MKTurbo]

I just watched the takeoff video. Ran the engines up to full throttle, no waiting for Vr the nose wheel was off the ground after about 100 feet. It looked like they lowered the nose to stay in ground effects then maybe touched down for an instant and off they went with plenty of runway left.