Fate of ATP pilot landing at wrong runway. A poll

Fate of ATP landing at wrong airport

  • No action, remain on duty

    Votes: 3 2.5%

  • Stern talking to. Remain on duty

    Votes: 18 14.8%

  • Letter of reprimand, additional landing training remain on duty

    Votes: 73 59.8%

  • Fired for cause

    Votes: 28 23.0%
  • Total voters
    122
N801BH said:
Unless "someone" came out and pressure washed 12 off the runway and repainted 14 on it during their short flight from Chicago... That crew is toast......
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With all due respect, Ben, at dusk it is hard to read the numbers until you are pretty close to them. And at that point, one is focused on the landing and not paying attention to what is written on the runway. In other words, one sees what one wants to see, or expects to see.
 
Ron Levy said:
I spent a good bit of time going up and down between the QNH levels and Flight Levels in the military, and I never learned to do it any other way -- when cleared from a Flight Level down below the transition level, we always set the altimeters as soon as the descent was started, and did not wait to pass FL180 to do that.
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So at FL310 you are cleared to 15,000 feet. You set altimeter to 30.30 starting descent and at FL 250 ATC advises "stop descent at FL230". Do you now reset standard before level off and then reset QNH when cleared down again?

If you were operating outside of the US the correct phraseology is "Descend on QNH" to allow one to set QNH while above the TL.


Ron Levy said:
Maybe that was just the military, but I can think of a number of safety reasons why that's probably the best way to do it.
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I can think of several safety reasons not to do it. And as demonstrated by the carrier at the CMO it resulted in several altitude bust PD's.


On the Airbus in the FMS on the PERF page you set the TA for takeoff and the TL for landing (these are usually in the database already but can be hard tuned if not) Our takeoff briefing and approach briefing verify the TA and TL on the chart against the FMS.

While climbing the QNH on the PD will flash when reaching TA to prompt the crew to set standard, and on descent will flash to prompt the crew to set QNH.
 
RotorAndWing said:
So at FL310 you are cleared to 15,000 feet. You set altimeter to 30.30 starting descent and at FL 250 ATC advises "stop descent at FL230". Do you now reset standard before level off and then reset QNH when cleared down again?
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Yup.
If you were operating outside of the US the correct phraseology is "Descend on QNH" to allow one to set QNH while above the TL.
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It's been a long time, and maybe procedures have changed, but nobody in Europe did that when I was there in the 80's. They'd just say "Descend and maintain six thousand, QNH 30.30" (or some millibars if they forgot we were USAF).
 
Ron Levy said:
Yup.
It's been a long time, and maybe procedures have changed, but nobody in Europe did that when I was there in the 80's. They'd just say "Descend and maintain six thousand, QNH 30.30" (or some millibars if they forgot we were USAF).
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Under ICAO you have to hear "descend on QNH". It's not uncommon to hear "descend to 10,000, QNH 1010" but that does not allow the change of altimeter above TL.

Anyway, back to my original point it's not uncommon if someone in the company (standards, training, flight ops, etc) tries to change a procedure via memo, FDCI, etc and it gets implemented before a fault is found. SMS should catch this, but it has to be used correctly first.
 
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Greg Bockelman said:
With all due respect, Ben, at dusk it is hard to read the numbers until you are pretty close to them. And at that point, one is focused on the landing and not paying attention to what is written on the runway. In other words, one sees what one wants to see, or expects to see.
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Just to clear the air....

I have the highest respect for the heavy iron drivers like Greg, R&W and Mari, who is probably a great corporate pilot..... Also Ron is up to speed on all the regs........

With that said....

This crew had a combined flight time total of 40,000 hours... There was a dispatcher looking over their shoulders. In front of BOTH pilots is a 14" tall display showing the heading of the plane.. Combined, I bet the salary in that cockpit is north of 380,000 a year.. These are professionals and demand a high salary for their experience.. Not one of them saw the wrong heading or runway number...:no::no:..

I agree that the runway marking can get obscure at dusk..:redface:

I applaud you and R&W's loyalty for fellow heavy iron drivers.. but... This mistake on their part is cut and dry in my book.... I do enjoy hearing from your side of the aisle though...:yes:
 
N801BH said:
Just to clear the air....

I have the highest respect for the heavy iron drivers like Greg, R&W and Mari, who is probably a great corporate pilot..... Also Ron is up to speed on all the regs........

With that said....

This crew had a combined flight time total of 40,000 hours... There was a dispatcher looking over their shoulders. In front of BOTH pilots is a 14" tall display showing the heading of the plane.. Combined, I bet the salary in that cockpit is north of 380,000 a year.. These are professionals and demand a high salary for their experience.. Not one of them saw the wrong heading or runway number...:no::no:..

I agree that the runway marking can get obscure at dusk..:redface:

I applaud you and R&W's loyalty for fellow heavy iron drivers.. but... This mistake on their part is cut and dry in my book.... I do enjoy hearing from your side of the aisle though...:yes:
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My interest here is in the incident. When I look at this I look at it in the eyes of the Investigator. Sorta like a puzzle, and I want to find all of the pieces and dig down to see where the failures occurred.

Is there pilot error? Probably, but I don't have a dog in the hunt, so I reserve judgement till the facts are in.

With 2 recent high profile wrong airport landings recently it does ask the question "What is going wrong?". Is there any similarities with this one and the Atlas crew in Kansas? Is there something here that may effect others? Or is this simply pilot error?:dunno:

One of the questions I asked earlier was the number of times the crew had flown this airport. A few posters stated it was irrelevant. Really? Now we know neither crewmember had ever landed here at night. Contributing factor? yes.
 
N801BH said:
I applaud you and R&W's loyalty for fellow heavy iron drivers.. but... This mistake on their part is cut and dry in my book.... I do enjoy hearing from your side of the aisle though...:yes:
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What is cut and dried is that they landed at the wrong airport. NO one is disputing that. Before we try, convict and execute the crew, it would be nice to have all of the details about WHY the incident occurred. If there are systemic problems, they need to be addressed.

Seems to me like flight crews, at least on the web boards, are executed without a trial.
 
I bet you I can tell you one similarity, neither flight had a VFR chart to look at to get a visual comparative reference of what they were looking at. The detail in a sectional is very good at giving you the clues at to where an airport lies by comparative reference. Lots of money and talent went into making those. Had one of them glanced at the VFR chart and noticed the lights, they would have realized they were looking at the wrong airport. They made a visual approach with instrument information.
 
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olasek said:
Dusk?
The landing was just about full hour before local sunset.
There were few clouds.
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I didn't start that rumor..... I just heard it from a professional pilot...:yes:;)... It was in post # 122

"With all due respect, Ben, at dusk it is hard to read the numbers until you are pretty close to them"
 
I doubt time of the day had anything to do with this case (unless pilots were blinded) but I agree that your mind may sees things it "expects/wants" to see.
 
Airline safety management systems are non-punitive systems. Therefore, the pilots will for sure return to duty after retraining and suspension, IF and only if they didn't purposely land at the wrong airport, which doesn't appear to be the case at this point.

I really feel bad for the pilots of the jet, you usually don't realize how complacent you are until it's too late.

EDIT: I was also thinking, I'm not sure how Southwest operates but I know a lot of airlines train their pilots to use the localizer/glideslope (if available) for situational awareness even during visual approaches. Obviously this crew wasn't using it otherwise we wouldn't be talking about this right now :)
 
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JordanDelaney said:
Airline safety management systems are non-punitive systems. Therefore, the pilots will for sure return to duty after retraining and suspension, IF and only if they didn't purposely land at the wrong airport, which doesn't appear to be the case at this point.
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This brings up an interesting socio-economic point. I could write volumes, but let me try to condense. First - does the job of pilot for SWA belong to a person, in this case an ATP, or does the job belong to SWA, which they then contracted out to a person with an ATP(a pro pilot). Frex; we've all heard someone say 'yeah - I lost MY job last week' after being let go for some reason or another. Was it really THEIR job, or was it the employers job that the person was filling? Notwithstanding the sole proprietor acting as his own boss or owner.

Next, we have the case of Dostoyevsky's Rashkolnikov (Crime and Punishment)who decides that the murder and theft of a fiendish money-lender would in fact be a case of social justice, and that the money taken could be used for the benefit of society. It's an ends-means justification or rationalization for state murder, calmly disguised from the POV of a state agent.

At what point does an action by the employer in this case become punishment for actions by the agent(pilot)? I would say the standards based approach where the pilot is expected to land at the right airport(all other outside influences discounted like a broke plane, etc) every time without fail would indicate that a failure of this magnitude would be removal for cause. If in fact the cause was that they just flew into the wrong airport, despite all the aids at hand, and willfully ignored references available that would be an egregious enough mistake to warrant SWA taking back their offer of employment.

Texas is an 'at will' employment state, and although the pilots may live in another state, their employment contract is stipulated on Texas state law. Thus, an employer can fire an employee for cause(some special exceptions apply) and 'take back' the job assigned or offered without recourse. I suppose the employee could sue for a tort, and eventually it might get to a jury. Based on what we see in this poll, the employee might have a decent shot at getting their seat back even after this kind of screw-up. With the way the poll is going in the other forum though, I think they would be out of luck, but it would be close.

At any rate, a firing for cause in this case might be based on the results of the FAA/NTSB investigation if they find that regs or ops spec was broken, leading to the mistake. And if SWA bases their removal on the results of that investigation, the pilots will not have much of a case for returning to ATP capacity.
 
Greg Bockelman said:
In the case of company policy causing pilot deviations, does the crew get hung with the violation or does the company accept that responsibility?
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Dunno, does anyone know what happened to the crew of the Southwest MDW fatal overrun?

I know the captain was only months away from mandatory retirement, so I doubt he flew again, but curious if the FO kept his job.
 
JordanDelaney said:
EDIT: I was also thinking, I'm not sure how Southwest operates but I know a lot of airlines train their pilots to use the localizer/glideslope (if available) for situational awareness even during visual approaches. Obviously this crew wasn't using it otherwise we wouldn't be talking about this right now :)
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As I understand it, there was no ILS or Loc for the runway they were intending to land on.
 
olasek said:
I doubt time of the day had anything to do with this case (unless pilots were blinded) but I agree that your mind may sees things it "expects/wants" to see.
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Time of day is probably a factor in that per the NTSB update, the Captain had never been to Branson before and the FO had only been there during the daytime, this was his first time at night.
 
olasek said:
Dusk?
The landing was just about full hour before local sunset.
There were few clouds.
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According to the news article I saw, the flight landed at 6:11 PM. According to the sunrise/sunset tables, sunset is 5:24pm today and would have been earlier a few days ago. Looks like about 45 minutes AFTER sunset.
 
N801BH said:
This mistake on their part is cut and dry in my book....
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This is the part where I have objections. They obviously ended up in a place where they didn't belong but I don't see the cause as being cut and dried. The investigation has barely started. It's certainly not to the point where they are assigning penalties like the OP wants the POA group to do.
 
Everskyward said:
This is the part where I have objections. They obviously ended up in a place where they didn't belong but I don't see the cause as being cut and dried. The investigation has barely started. It's certainly not to the point where they are assigning penalties like the OP wants the POA group to do.
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Cause is rather interesting in this case, they went 'visual' with no 'visual' reference material. Had they had a sectional, Foreflight, WingX or similar they would have had access to 'visual' reference material. Either they should be provided this material or restricted to instrument procedures start to finish with no "expect the visual" approaches to be allowed.
 
Henning said:
Either they should be provided this material
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It would be kind of cool to have Worldwide VFR charts, but that is a lot of bulk. LOL

or restricted to instrument procedures start to finish with no "expect the visual" approaches to be allowed.
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And watch the system crash in on itself. Having to do that would cut into the traffic rate at the bigger stations in a big way.
 
Fearless Tower said:
As I understand it, there was no ILS or Loc for the runway they were intending to land on.
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True, but they could've dialed in the ILS and flown the back course. That should have kept their butts out of a sling.

But...hindsight is wonderful.
 
timwinters said:
True, but they could've dialed in the ILS and flown the back course. That should have kept their butts out of a sling.

But...hindsight is wonderful.
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More than likely they would have had the GPS to 14 loaded up. But even so . . .
 
timwinters said:
True, but they could've dialed in the ILS and flown the back course. That should have kept their butts out of a sling.

But...hindsight is wonderful.
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The airplane has an FMS. On the arrival page you can select runway and the approaches available to the runway. If no approach, then simple select the runway and it will display on the ND. Depending upon the FMS you can make a extended runway centerline on the ND for the runway.

Going back to the approach briefing it will be interesting to see if it was briefed and how they configured for the approach.
 
RotorAndWing said:
The airplane has an FMS. On the arrival page you can select runway and the approaches available to the runway. If no approach, then simple select the runway and it will display on the ND. Depending upon the FMS you can make a extended runway centerline on the ND for the runway.

Going back to the approach briefing it will be interesting to see if it was briefed and how they configured for the approach.
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yes. that's the section of the cvr transcript I want to see

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
 
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