Southwest Airlines plane lands at wrong Missouri airport

[nycbusdriver]

INS? No, but IRS, yes (and gps). None of the planes your airline flies has INS either, they all have IRS.

 
IRS is INS, but with added duties.  If it has IRS, then it has, by definition, INS.

 

[nycbusdriver]

I recall several incidents where DL and NW landed at the wrong airport...

http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_Issues/others/wrong-ways.html

 
Decades ago, the industry joke was Delta using MacDill AFB ast their Tampa destination.  I think they landed there at least twice by mistake.
 
NW landed a DC-10 (I think) more than a decade ago in Brussels, instead of their real destination, Amsterdam.  I believe they realized their mistake just before touching down, but decided (probably wisely) to go ahead and complete the landing in BRU and regroup from there.
 
In this day and age, given the technology in modern airliners, I find it incredible that this can happen.  One airline that I am familiar with strongly "suggests" that an instrument approach to the landing runway always be loaded into the "magic box" as a backup to any visual approach.  This would likely preclude "finding" the wrong airport and landing there.
 
While I realize that this incident is 100% on the SW pilots' shoulders, I wonder if the tower controller at Branson bothered to look out the window?  It might have been helpful to avoiding the embarrassment of the pilots for him/her to say, "SW, you are cleared to land, but I do not have you in sight," and could have possibly saved lives had the landing runway been significantly shorter than it was.  Again, it was NOT the controller's fault, but they do indeed have some ethical responsibility for passenger safety and I question his/her situational awareness during aircraft operations.

 

[blue collar]

 
IRS is INS, but with added duties.  If it has IRS, then it has, by definition, INS.

Not exactly. INS was capable of navigating, while IRS doesn't; it gives pertinent data to your FMC (FMCG on your French planes), and that's what does the navigating. Same, but different.

 

[Glenn Quagmire]

It is FMGC on the Airbus, not FMCG. Not same but different ;-)

 

[blue collar]

Haha. Yeah, didn't notice I typo-d.

 

[WorldTraveler]

who was the third person in the cockpit and how did his/her presence affect the flight?

 

[LD3]

Isn't INS a product of the 80's, I seem to  remember our DC-8 flight crews telling us over the service headset not to pull power until given the signal or they would have to reset the INS?

 

[700UW]

LD3, that was still an ongoing thing even in the 90s and 2000s, if you pulled the ground power they had to rest the IRUs, if I remember correctly. It was the Inertial Reference Unit.

 

[blue collar]

The newer units are ADIRUs. It is the ADC and IRU in one box.

 

[700UW]

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/travel/240307761.html
 

DALLAS — A third person in the cockpit of a Southwest Airlines plane that landed at the wrong Missouri airport was a company dispatcher who had authority to be there, airline officials said Tuesday.
 

 

[cltrat]

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/travel/240307761.html

they're probably still trying to pull the seat out of his backside

 

[Hatu]

The captain of a Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) plane that landed at the wrong Branson, Missouri, airport Jan. 12 had never flown there, and the pilots didnt realize their error until they were on the ground, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said.

While the pilots programmed Branson Airport into their flight management computers, they saw a beacon at M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport and headed for it, the investigative agency said in an e-mailed statement today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-17/wrong-airport-southwest-pilot-hadn-t-flown-to-branson.html?cmpid=yhoo