Pilots need to use the autopilot/FMS more!

[3WE]

Thread title contains some sarcasm.

Score one for Boeing Bobby...keep adding automation, but the humans will always, on occasion, mess up.

Theres some need for this: as apparently the runway was about 1/2 the length of Branson regional, and there were news photos with the plane stopped with the nose wheel deep into piano keys at the threshold.

Do we have a bad safety trend at SWA?

Finally, I blame Atrude777.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/01/13/southwest-airlines-flight-lands-at-wrong-mo-airport/

Southwest Airlines flight lands at wrong Mo. airport

Published January 13, 2014Associated Press

• BRANSON, Mo. – A Southwest Airlines flight that was scheduled to arrive Sunday night at Branson Airport in southwest Missouri instead landed at an airport 7 miles north -- with a runway half the size of the intended destination.

Southwest Airlines Flight 4013, carrying 124 passengers and five crew members, was scheduled to go from Chicago's Midway International Airport to Branson Airport, airline spokesman Brad Hawkins said in a statement late Sunday. But the Boeing 737-700 landed about 7 miles northeast at Taney County Airport, which is also known as M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport.
Hawkins did not have information on why the plane went to the wrong airport. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tony Molinaro says the agency is investigating the incident.
"The landing was uneventful, and all customers and crew are safe," Hawkins said.
It's the second time in less than two months that a large jet has landed at the wrong airport. In November, a Boeing 747 that was supposed to deliver parts to McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kan., landed 9 miles north at Col. James Jabara Airport. That plane was flown by a two-person crew and had no passengers.
The website for M. Graham Clark Airport says its longest runway is 3,738 feet. Branson Airport's website says its runway is 7,140 feet long.
Flight tracking website Flightaware.com said the Southwest flight landed at 6:11 p.m. Sunday. It was partly cloudy and in the high 50s in Branson at that time.
"Our ground crew from the Branson airport arrived at the airport to take care of our customers and their baggage," Hawkins said.
Flight 4013 had been scheduled to go from Branson to Dallas' Love Field. Hawkins said a plane was flown in specifically to Branson Airport around 10 p.m. to take the passengers and crew to Dallas, which flightaware.com showed landed at 11:42 p.m.
Hawkins said the aircraft at M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport is able to take off on the smaller runway, and Southwest expects to fly it out "as early as tomorrow morning."
The Taney County Sheriff's Office referred all calls to M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport. Messages left for comment from M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport were not immediately returned.

[3WE]

After doing a little research, this gets more interesting...

The runway they landed on has about 3000 feet avaialable when you take out the displaced thresholds. Not saying you can't land a 737 on that but 1) it is a bit spectacular and 2) I'm thinking there's a small miracle that they must have somehow landed short and figured out really early on that they were in the wrong place so that they could do 'extreme' braking and not run off the end.

The runway headings differ by ~20 degrees- that's probably on the ragged edge where you might not pick up on it on final approach. Well, at least they monitored their airspeed and power settings.

[elaw]

I suspect SW puts a lot of emphasis on getting the aircraft down and stopped promptly after that incident at Midway a few years back...

[3WE]

Update...all of these airports are in a very hilly area...current reports are that the plane stopped 40 feet short of a fairly extreme drop off...

[obmot]

Further to 3WEs note above, I've posted two photos below:

1) location where the front gear stopped (ORANGE X), within I'd say 1-2 feet accuracy in any direction based on several media photos; and

2) a view of the 'dropoff' of the runway, showing the approximate center-line (RED X), as viewed from Highway 65

Using measurement tools, the front gear is 280-300ft from the very edge of the pavement.

[Evan]

The runway they landed on has about 3000 feet avaialable when you take out the displaced thresholds. Not saying you can't land a 737 on that but 1) it is a bit spectacular...

Sure, you can just do it at that LW if you are spot on Vref 30, if you are touching down promptly in the LZ and if the runway surface is dry. If the runway had been in even a good wet condition, this would have been ugly. I'm calling this one a miracle. By the looks of it, even 5 kts more and they could have ended up resting in pieces.

The industry needs to wake up and pilots need to get some more sleep.

[3WE]

There's a lot of semantics in this statement, but in some ways, they flew past the right airport to land at the wrong one.

It would appear that the wind favored the NW runways with the correct airport being located SSE of the wrong one.

Coming from Chicago- and assuming the arrival isn't overly exotic, you'd be turning towards final for the wrong airport, with the right airport dead ahead.

I have a personal light plane experience of how at night, in a sea of darkness, you have white and green beacons all over and choosing the right one is a challenge.

Of course, with a nice big moving map/mageta line, and SOP's where you dial up an ILS/LOC in the vast majority of cases- you shouldn't get too far "off course".

[brianw999]

One thing is for sure....stopping that close to the end of a drop off would ensure that my backside didn't come out of the seat. It would have taken a large bite of seat upholstery. !!

[3WE]

The industry needs to wake up and pilots need to get some more sleep.

I bet you (just for grins, because neither of us know right now) that they were well rested, and that this is one of those simultaneous brain fart deals where they were convinced that they were doing the right thing...

...heck, they'd probably been reading threads on JP.net and figured they should get in some old fashioned hand flying and navigation.

[obmot]

I bet you (just for grins, because neither of us know right now) that they were well rested, and that this is one of those simultaneous brain fart deals where they were convinced that they were doing the right thing...

...brain farts that some very simple navcomputer programming to provide a 'GPWS type' warning could basically ensure would never happen again.

[3WE]

...brain farts that some very simple navcomputer programming to provide a 'GPWS type' warning could basically ensure would never happen again.

Probably already exists.

However, there's an off button and a big steering wheel in front of the pilots.

Consequently your use of the word 'never' may be too strong (other wiggle words acknowledged)

[obmot]

Arent some systems such as GPWS/TCAS fairly involved to turn off rather than just pushing a button on the stick? Just curious - and I certainly HOPE they are difficult to inactivate.

[3WE]

The Mark IV FMS has an 'aviate' button that can over ride everything.

[TeeVee]

a quote from pprune: "With all of the navaids and fancy gear available to airliners in the developed world it takes a special breed of idiot to get it wrong nowadays.”

y'all can make all the excuses in the world for these turds. the bottom line is that they f'd up in a huge and unforgivable way. by the skin of their nutsacks they avoided a major catastrophe and likely loos of human lives, theirs probably included.

[MCM]

Obmot,

The system does exist, although it requires the latest generation of EGPWS computer, which most aircraft do not have.

It also requires the operator to have it installed.

Early incarnations of the system, while good, left a little to be desired. Unfortunately while it was a great theory, the system would often announce something just at the wrong time, and manage to block an ATC transmission or another call. They weren't just a passive system that would only tell you when you stuffed up, they also gave you other information. For example, taxiing around an airport it would announce "APPROACHING RUNWAY XX", which was for situational awareness. It also said things like "Wrong Runway".

I'm told newer updates of the system work better, however I haven't used them. I'd expect to see it in more and more new generation aircraft.

Perhaps ironically most of these stuff ups happen because pilots are trying to do the "pilot thing" and handfly approaches, or due to non runway aligned approaches. The only way you land at a wrong airport is to enter the wrong one in the database (which doesn't really happen), or you sight the incorrect runway and land on it.