NWA A319 Lands at Wrong Airport

[TonyC]

And I've been trying to figure out where I said "it can't happen to me".

A smart man will learn from his mistakes. A smarter man will learn from other people's mistakes. A foolish man will refuse instruction. The members of this board have sought to find the pearl of instruction that can be gleaned from the unfortunate instance of landing at the wrong airport. Your attitude insists that there IS no lesson to be learned, and it is typical of the "it can't happen to me" mentality.

As far as the FAR pilots getting help for their personal problem, well I guess it's a "good thing" in a humanistic, I-got-over-my-personal-problem, Lifetime channel sort of way....but I see nothing good at all about them using the arena professioal piloting to do it where far too much harm can be inflicted.

And I've been trying to figure out where someone said flying drunk was a "good thing." You can twist words that were said in an attempt to bolster your view, but that doesn't make them true. What was said is, some good did come out of the incident. No defense of the crew's action was offered, or implied. It was not in any way a "good thing." There was at least one "good thing" that resulted. What they did was unprofessional, inexcusable, and in no way "good."

 

[rstev1955]

Back when I was flying EC-130s we had a crew taking the TAC Stan/Eval team back to Langley following an ORI. We had done real well on the inspection until the crew landed at NAS Norfolk.

It was the TAC Inspector General Team. I was on that airplane...as was the TAC IG (General Officer). He was not a happy man. But then we weren't either. We had to wait for a bus to take us back to Langley.

Funny how you remember things. I had to join the team in Tucson on a commercial plane because I was down at Seymour Johnson flying. I don't remember the airline, but one of the flight attendants dumped a full pot of HOT coffee in a guys lap. He jumped up screaming and ripping his clothes off. They took him to the back and the next thing we saw he was hobbling up to First Class with blankets wrapped all over him. Poor guy...I hope he has a pass for life.

Oh well...back to the subject...

 

[LoveGun]

I saw the same thing almost happen in Grand Forks. A Northwest DC-9 was cleared for the visual to 36L at GFK, but instead lined up for runway 36 at the Red River airforce base. I was flight instructing at the time and heard the whole thing go down while giving a lesson. Lucky for the Northwest crew approach control caught their mistake and told the crew they might want to verify that they were on approach GFK not Red River. The crew came back and said something witty like "Oh yeah, guess we over shot final a bit." Sounded like ATC thought it was funny and the issue wasn't pushed any farther.

 

[CatYaaak]

A smart man will learn from his mistakes. A smarter man will learn from other people's mistakes. A foolish man will refuse instruction. The members of this board have sought to find the pearl of instruction that can be gleaned from the unfortunate instance of landing at the wrong airport. Your attitude insists that there IS no lesson to be learned, and it is typical of the "it can't happen to me" mentality.
QUOTE]

Nice little saying, I agree completely. But are you implying in all your years of flying that you, or any member of this board, never learned that being complacent can bite you in the a$$? "To learn" something means you were ignorant of a certain fact until some form of teaching was injected which enhanced your knowledge or increased your judgement. These incidents reinforce what we know...please don't try to pretend you don't already.

One more thing..you state that my attitude is typical of the "can't happen to me" mentality, despite my repeated assurances that I don't (and haven't ever) held it. Before I become your "bad-attitude straw man" just because I'll come out and say those NWA guys just got complecent and it bit them, perhaps you should re-read a little yourself.

Tell me Tony, is it more likely that after 25 years of flying I'm still accident/incident/violation-free and pretty-well liked in a cockpit because I'm a cocksure, can't-happen-to-me prick?....OR, is it more likely my writing comes from a vantage point of "it HAS happened to me, guilty of complacency, and boy am I glad nobody was around to notice except for the CP who was doing the flying, had 15,000 hours, knew the area like the back of his hand, said he had the traffic to follow in sight but lost him while I was busy head-down on my first non-CFI professional flight in a new-complicated airplane running checklists looking at the neato panel trying to keep up too busy aviating and communicating to keep at least half an eye on helping to "navigate" and keep situational awareness LIKE I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE BEEN (lost and didn't even know it) especially at night with the tower closed because well he11 ole ____ had been in here a million times and this was my first time and gotta get those callouts right etc etc ". Maybe, just maybe, I'm in the "been there done that-mentality crowd. Which is more likely Tony?

FO: "Wow _____ (taxiing in), look at all those helicopters parked over there".

CPT ___: "OH SH#T!"

FSS (a few minutes later after airborne...again): "Yeah, we figured you guys were over there."

Of course...this is just supposin'.

 

[TonyC]

Nice little saying, I agree completely. But are you implying in all your years of flying that you, or any member of this board, never learned that being complacent can bite you in the a$$? "To learn" something means you were ignorant of a certain fact until some form of teaching was injected which enhanced your knowledge or increased your judgement. These incidents reinforce what we know...please don't try to pretend you don't already.

One more thing..you state that my attitude is typical of the "can't happen to me" mentality, despite my repeated assurances that I don't (and haven't ever) held it. Before I become your "bad-attitude straw man" just because I'll come out and say those NWA guys just got complecent and it bit them, perhaps you should re-read a little yourself.

OK, I took your advice and re-read your posts from the beginning, looking for the point where we got crossed.

I found:

(to 320AV8R)
If I ever land at the wrong airport you can be amused at me.

(to 320AV8R)
But I don't think there's much to learn from landing at the wrong airport....say, why don't we just call for what it is....."getting lost". They got lost and didn't even know it. Sure it'll happen again, but I don't think "learning" is involved, since we ALL know how to avoid this at this stage. It does, however, highlight and reinforce something about complacency that we already know well through experience or example. It'll bite you in the a$$!

(to me)
Things like backing up approaches, never thinking of something as "garden variety" or a "milk run"....these are FUNDAMENTAL aspects and attitudes of even BASIC airmanship, and if anyone here hasn't heard/learned this from Day 1 then they've beeing living on Mars. One doesn't "un-learn" the dangers of complacency, they aren't ignorant at the time of getting bitten....they're guilty of it. If people weren't ever guilty, it wouldn't even be an issue. For that NW crew, given their equip and no doubt wealth of experience there really is no other answer.

To paraphrase and summarize, "IF I ever land at the wrong airport, you can laugh at me, there's nothing to learn from landing at the wrong airport, the only possible cause would be complacency, and the NWA crew was obviously complacent." Now, I realize I can't divine your attitude with 100% accuracy, but the words you use serve as something of a window into your attitude. These words are typical of the "it can't happen to me" mentality.

Now, I did notice a subtle message here that perhaps you've intended to broadcast all along and I missed. IS it your position that the lesson can only be learned once, and after that only reinforced? If such is the case, and if everyone in this audience, from 1.5 hour student to 15,000 Major Captain has already learned this particular lesson, then nobody can learn it again - - it can only be reinforced? If that's the semantic distinction you want to make, I suppose we're in agreement to a degree.

If a lesson can only be learned once (I'll play along to get along) and thereafter only reinforced, then you're right. I had already learned it, as have most of us on the forum, and I dare say all of us who fly for a living. According to that model, we could only have the lesson reinforced. We should be careful in the future, then, to say "Lesson reinforced" where we have been accustomed to saying "Lesson learned." Ill bet, though, there may be a reader or two that has never considered the possibility of two airports being so similar in appearance and so close in proximity as to ever fool a pilot into landing at the wrong one. For them, the lesson can be learned for the first time. Oops, I slipped. Learned for the first time, in this structure, is redundant, right? I'll rephrase. Some people learned a lesson from the NWA crew's mistake.

If indeed you are hanging your objection to the "lesson learned" assertion on this subtle semantic structure, I find it all the more curious that you failed to see the difference between the FAR incident being a "good thing" (your words) and there being a "good thing" come out of the FAR incident (320AV8R's words). You needn't explain your thinking there, I just find it curious.

FO: "Wow _____ (taxiing in), look at all those helicopters parked over there".

CPT ___: "OH SH#T!"

FSS (a few minutes later after airborne...again): "Yeah, we figured you guys were over there."

Of course...this is just supposin'.

A FedEx 727 crew made a landing at the wrong airport, and subsequently decided to take-off and fly to the correct destination. The REAL trouble came when they took off without a Dispatch Release.

 

[CatYaaak]

OK, I took your advice and re-read your posts from the beginning, looking for the point where we got crossed.

I found:To paraphrase and summarize, "IF I ever land at the wrong airport, you can laugh at me, there's nothing to learn from landing at the wrong airport, the only possible cause would be complacency, and the NWA crew was obviously complacent." Now, I realize I can't divine your attitude with 100% accuracy, but the words you use serve as something of a window into your attitude. These words are typical of the "it can't happen to me" mentality.

Now, I did notice a subtle message here that perhaps you've intended to broadcast all along and I missed. IS it your position that the lesson can only be learned once, and after that only reinforced?

And again I ask you, are my words/attitude typical of a person in denial, OR are they from one who has had this knowledge regarding this specific, wrong-airport f#ck-up reinforced at one time or another via my own guilty-of-complacency experience and knows that when GIVEN GOOD EQUIPMENT AND NAVAIDS there's really no excuse for me/them/anyone then/now/ever, no matter what human factor elements/pressures were involved at the time (short of getting shot at, or both pilots breathing hallucenogenic mushroom dust planted by practical joking mx techs) for this to happen?

My position regarding learning a lesson just once is qualified "yes", SOME lessons are...you needn't experience them yourself or be shown/told repeatedly in order to learn them. For these, if you then go on to do the opposite, you're either guilty of complacency (losing focus, becoming CARELESS), reckless (thinking "it can't happen to me"), suicidal (I'm gonna make it happen to me), or just too mentally deficient to understand or remember.

For instance, take playing Russian Roulette. We learn early that playing it is not one of those "good things" we've written of. In fact, we could (if I may go so far) call it a Very Bad Thing. You don't need to actually play Russian Roulette to learn this. You don't even have to witness it being played to learn, nor hear actual accounts of others playing and using their head as wall paint. Barring the aforementioned mental deficiency or suicidal tendencies, even if the game had never been invented/named or even been tried before, a reasonable person would come to understand (learn) just merely upon hearing an explanation of what's involved in this activity, that it would constitute a Very Bad Thing, and not to be tried. Do people have to keep blowing their own brains out for the rest of us to learn?...or do we just know it.

So what's so different about learning the obvious results and dangers of being complacent when engaged in an complex, unforgiving environment like aviation where we can also lapse into mundane routines if not self-vigilant? Why did the NWA crew wind up at the wrong place? They have great experience and equipment. Let's rule out suicidal tendences and mental deficiency (I'll go out on a limb and say I KNOW they were smart enough to remember that landing at the designated arrival airport matters). I certainly won't accuse them of being reckless, unless some authority were to say otherwise. What, in all reasonableness, is left besides carelessness due to complacency to explain this?

 

[TonyC]

And again I ask you, are my words/attitude typical of a person in denial, OR are they from one who has had this knowledge regarding this specific, wrong-airport f#ck-up reinforced at one time or another via my own guilty-of-complacency experience ...

Again, I'll tell you your WORDS are characteristic of someone with an "It'll never happen to me" attitude. Given the time and opportunity to elaborate, you've convinced me that the latter is the case. Perhaps it's your experience which you've blamed on complaceny that has you convinced that's the only way it could happen to anyone else.

What, in all reasonableness, is left besides carelessness due to complacency to explain this?

Fatigue, unfamiliarity with that particular airport, an equipment malfunction that caused a distraction, a confusing NOTAM, temporary disorientation, a distraction on the radio, an FA call light that interrupted a normal pattern, a position error in the IRU's... any number of things which the investigators will likely examine. We just don't know, do we?

If I were forced to postulate a cause, I'd likely side with your complacency theory. Since I'm not forced, I'd prefer to wait until the investigation is complete rather than offer my uninformed opinion now. In the meantime, the incident will serve me as yet another reminder to remain ever vigilant.

 

[CatYaaak]

Fatigue, unfamiliarity with that particular airport, an equipment malfunction that caused a distraction, a confusing NOTAM, temporary disorientation, a distraction on the radio, an FA call light that interrupted a normal pattern, a position error in the IRU's... any number of things which the investigators will likely examine. We just don't know, do we?

If I were forced to postulate a cause, I'd likely side with your complacency theory. Since I'm not forced, I'd prefer to wait until the investigation is complete rather than offer my uninformed opinion now. In the meantime, the incident will serve me as yet another reminder to remain ever vigilant.

All those things you've listed..the human factor elements, various distractions, slight malfunctions...while interesting in determining the causal-chain later.. are all part of the normal environment we work in. Normally, it's complex and dynamic. We get paid to deal with this complexity AND do such big-picture things like land at the right airport....all at the same time. Assuming the crew's skill is such that they deserve to be sitting in those cockpit seats (and I don't doubt their skills), if the big picture is lost while dealing with the kind of garden variety examples you cite, then complacency resulting in big-picture carelessness/mis-prioritizing certainly played a part.

Those things are perhaps "factors" contributing to a state of mind that led to a massive brain-fart (5 things in your list were evident in my incident, plus 2 more..way behind the aircraft and too much trust in another pilot), but that's not the same as being the "reason", or an excuse. It was my f-up just as much as the PIC's, because I knew better and how to have prevented it. Flying in the Middle East and Africa, we get IRU/FMS position errors disagreements consistently...and there are errors in GPS surveys for many countries and/or airports..but even so there are still ways to make sure you have the right one before actually landing. Having also flown all around the Dakotas in the past, I know there are even more ways to find them there.

We do agree, however, to remain ever-vigilant.

 

[MLBWINGBORN]

You guys need to kiss and make up..

Get a room or something..

 

[CatYaaak]

You guys need to kiss and make up..

Get a room or something..

I'm already in a hotel room but Tony can't come over because...well...your wife thinks three's a crowd.