Unscheduled Landing

[KLang]

Story link (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/03/national/main620827.shtml)


A Northwest Airlines flight that was headed to Rapid City, S.D., landed a few miles off course at Ellsworth Air Force Base, and passengers had to wait in the plane for more than three hours while their crew was interrogated.

Passengers on Northwest Flight 1152, an Airbus A-319 from St. Paul, expected to be welcomed to Rapid City Regional Airport on Saturday, but after about five minutes they were told to close their window shades and not look out, said passenger Robert Morrell.

"He (the pilot) hemmed and he hawed and he said 'We have landed at an Air Force base a few miles from the Rapid City airport and now we are going to figure out how we're going to get from here to there,'" Morrell told the St. Paul Pioneer Press by cell phone during the delay Saturday.


:laugh:

[4wheeldrifter]

LOFL. I think I've flown with that guy before. :laugh:

[nrc]

I started to make a post about this yesterday. I could see a little commuter plane but I thought Airliners always got a vector into the glidepath from the control tower even if they were making a visual landing.

[racer2c]

I started to make a post about this yesterday. I could see a little commuter plane but I thought Airliners always got a vector into the glidepath from the control tower even if they were making a visual landing.

That was the first thing that came to my mind also. I was big into the flight sims for years and even in a 'game' your glide path is dictated. weird.

[B3RACER1a]

Wierd! Bet that guy has some questions to answer. :o

[oddlycalm]

I started to make a post about this yesterday. I could see a little commuter plane but I thought Airliners always got a vector into the glidepath from the control tower even if they were making a visual landing.

Yeah, there are a half dozen reasons why this should never happen to professional pilots flying heavy iron. First is that the TCA controller, in this case a military controller from Ellsworth, would be vectoring the flight into position. Normally, even in clear VFR conditions, the major airlines use the ILS beacons at the end of the runway to home in on. In this case they dropped through the clouds, so they absolutely had to be on instruments all the way in. About the only thing you can say in this situation that is close to being mitigating is that to two airports are in close proximity. It's always tempting to believe a visual sighting over one's instruments, however it's never a good idea to commit unless you have first validated that the instruments are wrong.

The pilot in command is unlikely to be flying again any time soon as the FAA tends to take a dim view of this sort of thing. It's hard to overstate the danger of a heavy with a couple hundred people aboard suddenly arriving unannounced on a hot runway with high performance military aircraft operating. Northwest does seem more prone to screwups than the other majors, but I have no current statistics to back up that impression.

oc

[G.]

"but after about five minutes they were told to close their window shades and not look out, "

Yeah, I'm going to comply with that.

[dando]

Update (http://www.kotatv.com/localnews/story.asp?ID=19133#northwest-jet-lands-on-painters)


Today three runway painters count themselves very lucky to be alive. Mike Palmer was one of the three painters repainting the runway's navigational stripes when they noticed the plane descending. At first they thought it was a fly-over, but when they saw the landing gear come down…they knew there was a problem.

-Kevin