Today's award goes to the pilots of a commuter airliner flying between Texas and Louisiana yesterday.
Colgan Flight 3222, a Continental Connection flight bound from Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport to Lake Charles Regional Airport, mistakenly landed at the much smaller Southland Field — a freak occurrence that has happened at least two other times in the last 20 years. According to Sam Larsh, Southland Field Airport Manager, it happened twice in the mid 1990s.A Saab 340 of Colgan Air, operating as Continental Connection,
similar to the aircraft that landed at Southfield, LA
“This is the third time it’s happened,” Larsh said. “An airline pilot is flying by an instrument flight plan and they are supposed to land on runway 15 in Lake Charles. On a crystal clear night like last night (Wednesday), it’s the first runway lights they come upon after being in pitch black between Houston and here.
“It’s an easy mistake to make, but it’s one they probably should never make,” Larsh continued. “It’s only eight miles from our airport to Lake Charles Regional with virtually the same coordinates.”
There's more at the link.
I know both towns, and both airports. They're on virtually the same latitude - one flies over Southland airport on the way in to Lake Charles from the west. I can understand such a mistake being made once, particularly at night . . . but I'm surprised to hear that the same mistake has now been made three times! I'd have thought that after the first incident, pilots on that route would have been warned about the possibility of a mix-up, and be required to double-check their position before touching down. Clearly, that was too much to expect . . .
Peter
7 comments:
I was supposed to fly that very same connection a week ago. Now I feel even less comfortable taking it...
Let's look on the bright side.
Any landing (even at the wrong field) you can walk away from is a good landing.
Peter - I think you're being way too hard on these pilots. They probably were in grade school the last time this mistake was made.
I very nearly made the same mistake on my first solo cross-country, and by "very nearly," I mean I was on short final and probably a hundred feet off the deck when it finally dawned on me that the runway number was wrong. For bonus points, the airport at which I intended to land was one I'd already visited; I was coming from a different direction, though, so I didn't pick up on it like I should have.
In my defence, I was a rookie with maybe fifty hours; I assume (hope!) these guys had a little more experience.
I live a mere two miles from that "wrong" field, and I've flown into the "right" field as both pilot and passenger dozens of times.
I'm calling this one as "Dumba**" mistake. southland, the wrong field, has ONE shorter runway. The right field, Lake Charles MUnicipal, has TWO runways, one MUCH longer, and is fully instrumented.
And five miles from THAT field is Chennault, with 11,000 feet of concrete, and I've been in the air, listening to the radio when a GOVERNMENT (not military) flight was talking to LC Municipal while on short final for Chennault.
I too have made the wrong airport mistake, but I was a STUDENT on my first solo cross-country, not a rated airline pilot with a fully instrumented cockpit AND a co-pilot.
MC
Mistakes of this sort are not as uncommon as you might think. One of the more notorious incidents occurred five or six years ago, when a Northwest airlines Airbus bound for Rapid City, South Dakota landed by mistake at Ellsworth Air Force Base several miles away, which of course is strictly off-limits to civil air traffic.
There also have been a number of cases in which airlines have landed on taxiways instead of runways.
Peter
"Pitch dark" is a huge exaggeration. Particularly after Katrina, which allowed almost every coonass (beg pardon, I mean "citizen of Lousiana") a new fish camp. Not that I haven't had some good times in some of them....
But still, the light density on the Causeway is much higher than it was a few years ago. Better for fishing, worse for trapping, as my frens in the Lake Chuckles area say.
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