SWA lands at wrong Branson Airport

[Little G-Force]

Can't agree with that. It will never happen if you land on the runway at the end of the localizer, RNAV approach, VOR radial or just the extended centerline. To land at the wrong airport means they were using zero back up for SA. Call it like it is.....this was gross negligence.

We all make mistakes but not to this magnitude.

Wave runner. Thinks we are all pompous A holes. For demanding a minimum level of command competence. Poor guy. Joe passenger deserves it.

 

[HowardBorden]

Yes, keep repeating that. It may help. Operating to the limit of all guidelines at all times is the common sense way to approach safety. If they didn't want us to go right up to the limits then why would they write them down for us to know what they are? I assume you also accept unlimited MELs because, hey, if they say it's legal it must be safe.

Have you ever operated at 250 knots below 10,000?
Have you ever thrown the gear or operated the flaps at maximum placarded speed?
Have you ever had a rest period reduced to only 8 hours?

The limits are in place to delineate the line for which a safe operation crosses from safe to unsafe or a legal operation becomes illegal. The safe side of either is exactly that, the safe side. I am not advocating operating at the maximum limits at all times, I'm simply saying that to do so has been deemed safe and legal by the folks making the rules governing our profession.

 

[DCAA320]

As for being heads down, if you can't change a landing runway in any FMS in 15 seconds during flight, than you should not be flying the airplane that FMS is attached to. And if you can't find 15 seconds on approach to dedicate to that change, then you should not be flying that approach.

Should take less than 15 seconds, as little as 4 keystrokes, at worse, throw the airport in the fix page, 5 keystrokes to give u DME.

 

[waveflyer]

You put periods in weird places little G

Look. It's a. Mentality thing. The crew. Did a. Boneheaded thing- but none of. Us know. All the. Factors - I'm not saying it's acceptable, I'm saying the disease of thinking it can't happen to you and jumping on the crew smugly is wasted energy.

You are coming to wrong conclusions about my opinion. I'm reserving judgement until I know more and trying to have a conversation about heads down programming.

I wish the crew had been on it. But I'm glad they were on it well enough to stop the aircraft in time.

You can't see it, but your embarrassing (or tragic) day is coming with that mentality. It's been proven over and over -

 

[Little G-Force]

You put periods in weird places little G

Look. It's a. Mentality thing. The crew. Did a. Boneheaded thing- but none of. Us know. All the. Factors - I'm not saying it's acceptable, I'm saying the disease of thinking it can't happen to you and jumping on the crew smugly is wasted energy.

You are coming to wrong conclusions about my opinion. I'm reserving judgement until I know more and trying to have a conversation about heads down programming.

I wish the crew had been on it. But I'm glad they were on it well enough to stop the aircraft in time.

You can't see it, but your embarrassing (or tragic) day is coming with that mentality. It's been proven over and over -

Damn iPad keyboard mr wave.. There are divergent views on this. There has to be strict adherence to SOPs. Why do you keep bringing me up as you keep referring to my career . I would never cast dispersions on you , for I know you not. I go around. If it is not right. Now we all know what right is. So I'm sure we will find out why but as one guy said. Training departments now have the task in recurrent to reinforce safe practices. So this never happens again or there is no loss of life for using the short wrong runway at an unauthorized airport .

 

[SpauldingSmails]

FYI. One casts aspersions.

 

[waveflyer]

Haha-
I get th.E iPad mN-

Points made and beaten-
No worries and I don't cast anything but a fishing line-

 

[HighSpeedClimb]

Actually it's along the lines of a good landing starts with a good approach. I.E how you conduct every phase of your flight is, in fact, connected.
If you are of the mindset that beating the crap out of the passengers to save a minute or 2 on the taxiway, it stands to reason that you would also be in a hurry and more vulnerable to mistakes once airborne.
Now that said, WE ALL LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES! This could happen to anyone. It's pretty weak to start pointing fingers when something goes wrong. Everyone one of us has made mistakes. It's the ones that think they are above other pilots mistakes tend to be the really weak ones you gotta watch.

I take offense to the term this could happen to anyone. I say Bullsh$t. 30 years flying and 26 of those on 121 this doesn't just happen to anyone. This could have been serious had they rolled another 400 ft or so. Missing taxi ways or missing alt crossings or on the lines of that ok. But land at a wrong airport with the sophisticated instruments onboard. It's plain idiotic. I'll wait for the final report, which by the way, may never surface so let's just say this was not something 99% of the pilots on this board will ever do.

 

[freightdogfred]

I take offense to the term this could happen to anyone. I say Bullsh$t. 30 years flying and 26 of those on 121 this doesn't just happen to anyone. This could have been serious had they rolled another 400 ft or so. Missing taxi ways or missing alt crossings or on the lines of that ok. But land at a wrong airport with the sophisticated instruments onboard. It's plain idiotic. I'll wait for the final report, which by the way, may never surface so let's just say this was not something 99% of the pilots on this board will ever do.

It happens. It's happened quite a few times. It almost happened to me, I guess that's why I sympathize with those two poor ba$tards who prob will get chitcanned. I wish them luck. To all you skygods who never fart in the cockpit good luck to you too.

 

[Mamma]

If you think a certain number of mistakes as a captain are OK, please tell me which ones are? I'm dying to know as I'm sure others are. You're attitude comes from thinking this is an attack on SWA. It couldn't Be farther from the truth. This is about airmanship...

You should read the book "Sky Gods.". Pay special attention to the problems Pan Am had with captains who could do no wrong.

As to how many mistakes are ok, the answer is simple: as many as you can mitigate. I have yet to fly the perfect flight and I make mistakes. I catch most of them and the other pilot catches the few I miss. (the goal is to mitigate in the flight deck vs ATC or an incident!) This is why we stress effective CRM and pilot monitoring. Nobody is perfect and I highly doubt you bring an "A" game every time. Everyone needs to remember one thing when these things happens: There is always a chain of events that lead up to an incident. Multiple people have an opportunity to break a link and prevent an incident. So, that being said, if the pilots did not willfully violate policy or purposely act reckless, they should not be hung out alone to dry by armchair quarterbacks.

 

[densoo]

As to how many mistakes are ok, the answer is simple: as many as you can mitigate. I have yet to fly the perfect flight and I make mistakes. I catch most of them and the other pilot catches the few I miss. (the goal is to mitigate in the flight deck vs ATC or an incident!) This is why we stress effective CRM and pilot monitoring. Nobody is perfect and I highly doubt you bring an "A" game every time. Everyone needs to remember one thing when these things happens: There is always a chain of events that lead up to an incident. Multiple people have an opportunity to break a link and prevent an incident.

Bullseye.

 

[waveflyer]

Bullseye.

+1
Said much better than I could manage Mamma

 

[rtmcfi]

You should read the book "Sky Gods.". Pay special attention to the problems Pan Am had with captains who could do no wrong.

As to how many mistakes are ok, the answer is simple: as many as you can mitigate. I have yet to fly the perfect flight and I make mistakes. I catch most of them and the other pilot catches the few I miss. (the goal is to mitigate in the flight deck vs ATC or an incident!) This is why we stress effective CRM and pilot monitoring. Nobody is perfect and I highly doubt you bring an "A" game every time. Everyone needs to remember one thing when these things happens: There is always a chain of events that lead up to an incident. Multiple people have an opportunity to break a link and prevent an incident. So, that being said, if the pilots did not willfully violate policy or purposely act reckless, they should not be hung out alone to dry by armchair quarterbacks.

Spot on.....

 

[Dan Roman]

I take offense to the term this could happen to anyone.

I should clarify...what I'm saying is we all make mistakes. Maybe you or I wouldn't make THIS mistake. Seems to me you should always have electronic back up to a visual. In fact, whatever happened simply couldn't have been done in an AirBus without gross negligence. So personally I couldn't do this, but I could make some other kind of error ...we all make mistakes, we all get fatigued, we all have mechanical problems and we all could get victimized by a perfect storm of them coming together at the wrong time. So maybe this was a total bonehead deal, but the simple fact is we are all human and can screw up. If not like this then something else. The less likely you are willing to admit it simply means you are more likely than most to have problems.

 

[scoreboardII]

You should read the book "Sky Gods.". Pay special attention to the problems Pan Am had with captains who could do no wrong.

As to how many mistakes are ok, the answer is simple: as many as you can mitigate. I have yet to fly the perfect flight and I make mistakes. I catch most of them and the other pilot catches the few I miss. (the goal is to mitigate in the flight deck vs ATC or an incident!) This is why we stress effective CRM and pilot monitoring. Nobody is perfect and I highly doubt you bring an "A" game every time. Everyone needs to remember one thing when these things happens: There is always a chain of events that lead up to an incident. Multiple people have an opportunity to break a link and prevent an incident. So, that being said, if the pilots did not willfully violate policy or purposely act reckless, they should not be hung out alone to dry by armchair quarterbacks.

I hope there will be whole lots of mitigation as to why this happened, for those pilots sake.

To the it could happen to any of us line of thought? BS.

No, I have never had a perfect flight in 121 operations, because I'm always watching the other guy as much as what I do. I catch some of his stuff, he catches mine. We always do good enough.

But to say you PLANNED and BRIEFED and EXECUTED as two professional pilots who claim to be deserving a very high paycheck, and then land at the wrong field , with the excuse it could happen to any of us, is just BS on so many levels gentleman.

I'm all for waiting for the facts here, I hope they show many factors the crew faced, beyond the realm of normal, enough to result in a lack of some simple awareness of their true intended destination, I do., I really do.

Because, I am NOT going to tell the next paying passenger that "IT COULD HAPPEN TO ANY OF US!" If you really think that, please find other employment you are capable of doing to your level of competency.