So much for Homeland Security

[dalt01]

looks like an honest mistake, whens the last time you pushed the wrong button at your work station, missed a stop on the bus you drive, turned a knob the wrong way on the machine you run, it happens and wouldnt have gotten more than a page 8 lower left in the pre paranoia age. as for VH, its clear that this person sets around chuckling about all the people that "let themselves get stirred up" about the things he purports. i dont know if thats his fault or ours. oh by the way, i thought this site had something to do with WDW??????

 

[Van Helsing]

I still have to wonder about the air traffic controllers. Don't they advise the pilots as to which runway to land on? They see them on their screens. Don't they advise a slight change in course if they're off? Just curious.

Yeah i was thinking the same - and why did the tower at the base not spot them and tell them wrong airport

 

[MICKEY88]

Originally posted by Van Helsing
Yeah i was thinking the same - and why did the tower at the base not spot them and tell them wrong airport

if they came out of the cloud spotted the runway and started descent immediately, the decision might have been made that it was better to have them land than to have them try to pull it back up.

 

[Pin Wizard]

Originally posted by MICKEY88
if they came out of the cloud spotted the runway and started descent immediately, the decision might have been made that it was better to have them land than to have them try to pull it back up.

But any ATC should have seen them on their screen long before they descended the clouds! Hmmmm...

 

[Van Helsing]

Exactly Pin Wizard

 

[MICKEY88]

Originally posted by Pin Wizard
But any ATC should have seen them on their screen long before they descended the clouds! Hmmmm...

but since the airports were 7 miles apart..which at the speed they'd have been flying would only be a little over 2 minutes...would anyone have suspected anything until they started their descent..

 

[Van Helsing]

MICKEY88 how long do think it would take to say - wrong airport ?

 

[MICKEY88]

Originally posted by Van Helsing
MICKEY88 how long do think it would take to say - wrong airport ?

it wouldn't take long at all..but as I stated before..

if they came out of the cloud spotted the runway and started descent immediately, the decision might have been made that it was better to have them land than to have them try to pull it back up.

someone might have said wrong airport...do you know for a fact that they didn't....perhaps they did and the pilot didn't feel safe trying to pull back up and continue flying..there is a certain point , which when reached it's safer to land than to pull up and try to climb back up..especially once speed has decreased to a certain point..

for all we know they may have been ordered to land at that point..and instructed to give the orders to close the curtains..and such...

 

[Van Helsing]

MICKEY88 PM Supergoof

 

[MICKEY88]

Originally posted by Van Helsing
MICKEY88 PM Supergoof

?????????

 

[Van Helsing]

Second page MICKEY88 ( PM him )

 

[MICKEY88]

Originally posted by Van Helsing
Second page MICKEY88 ( PM him )

I PMed him yesterday.. all I learned was where he works...so does that make what he says factual...

 

[Van Helsing]

all I learned was where he works...so does that make what he says factual...

Well i'm more inclined to believe him

 

[Saffron]

It all sounds very strange to me, but I don't know what happened or why it happened, if it was a mistake or not, or what. The only thing I know is ... as soon as I was told to pull the shade and not look out the window, I would have gotten to a window and looked out.

 

[Miss Jasmine]

I was thinking about this last night after I heard the story on the news...could it have been that the pilot was told to land there for some reason?

 

[sgtdisney]

As it has been said, at least the official word is, the pilots made an error. It has happened before, and I seriously think that there was nothing nefarious about it. Seven miles is far when you are on the ground, but when you are in the air travelling at 150 miles per hour, those seven miles pass rather quickly. Instruments can fail, you also have a human factor involved.

I would be willing to bet that those pilots broke free of the clouds and saw the air force base and assumed that it was the airport they were heading for and continued their descent. They probably realized, too late of course, that the field was not the one they had intended to reach. While it only takes a second to say 'Wrong Airport' it takes some complex decision making to decide if you want to abort an approach. I am sure that in those seconds the plane was identified as commercial by the tower and a situation declared. Of course maybe they could scramble jet fighters in 5 seconds and take off on the same runway that a huge jetliner is landing on at the same time.

 

[MICKEY88]

Originally posted by sgtdisney
As it has been said, at least the official word is, the pilots made an error. It has happened before, and I seriously think that there was nothing nefarious about it. Seven miles is far when you are on the ground, but when you are in the air travelling at 150 miles per hour, those seven miles pass rather quickly. Instruments can fail, you also have a human factor involved.

I would be willing to bet that those pilots broke free of the clouds and saw the air force base and assumed that it was the airport they were heading for and continued their descent. They probably realized, too late of course, that the field was not the one they had intended to reach. While it only takes a second to say 'Wrong Airport' it takes some complex decision making to decide if you want to abort an approach. I am sure that in those seconds the plane was identified as commercial by the tower and a situation declared. Of course maybe they could scramble jet fighters in 5 seconds and take off on the same runway that a huge jetliner is landing on at the same time.

that's what I've been saying...but you said it so much better....

 

[Pin Wizard]

Well, it will be interesting to hear what they come up with, if they tell us anything at all.

 

[Eeyore1954]

It's not like this has never happened before. I did a Google search and found more than 116,000 entries for wrong landings, wrong airport, wrong runway, wrong direction ... not just in the U.S., but all over the world. Pilot errors occur -- nothing nefarious or notorious about that. I'm just amazed that they can get these lumbering behomeths in the air and land them safely on the ground again as often as they do.

 

[Nebsky]

I work for an airline and it happens sometimes, especially when there are two airports in the same area with the same controllers vectoring both airports.

VH
Approach control and Tower are on separate radio Frequencies.
Approach control vectors them to a final approach then tells them to switch to tower at the outter marker, usually about 6-7 miles from runway. Some regional airports in the US do not have towers. The airliner contacts on a unicom freq, to announce intentions. Possibly this is the case with Rapid City. I dont know. There could be as many as 4 or 5 different frequencies to use for ground to plane contact. If you figure that each radio freq is used to contact the plane and tried at least 2 times on each one, the plane would have already landed. As stated above, 7 miles is covered very quickly. There would have been absolutely no way to scramble fighters unless they were sitting alert at the end of the runway. Besides that, Ellsworth is a bomber base. I dont believe they even have fighters based there, but I may be wrong.

Ill wait to hear the final results of the investigation. No reason to get all bent out of shape and try to vanquish someone without all the details of what transpired.