I hope the passengers, slightly inconvenienced though they were, have a renewed appreciation of the large safety margins built into modern air transport. Really good brakes, excellent tires, and at least during normal ops grossly overlong runway requirements. I love seeing what these people movers can do in a pinch! Even a screw up like that was safely pulled off. Hell I would have complimented the pilot on the way out but he probably wasn't standing outside the cockpit glad handing passengers as they exited. Looks like sound basic flying skills, just shitty flight planning. I doubt that JAL pilot who crashed at the CORRECT airport (SFO) could salvage a screwup like that.

Now this would be interesting: think this airline pilot flies back country in GA aircraft on his off duty hours? I hope he keeps his job, because he will be the last airline pilot in the world to ever make that mistake again, so really, he is now a greater asset to SouthWest then he was before.

JAL didn't crash at SFO

Actually, JAL did land short at SFO, about 1966?
Way short, sat in the bay on short final for a week.
Wings just at water level.
Flew for years after as a freighter.
.

Sorry forgot the

Those two pilots are having a really bad day. Their airline careers in the US are over.

How can you do that with GPS? Two people cross checking each other?? If that is the best you can do you should be driving a bus not a jet! I'm sorry. I don't want me or my loved ones behind those yahoos.

G'Day

A live link for the takeoff.

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/live

Shit ya even you and me found Bermuda Dunes at night without GPS 10deg left I think

Unfortunately, the pilots could have prevented this situation had they followed the FAA regulations, as well as their own airline specific operating procedures.

Whether they will be allowed to keep their jobs will be up to Southwest and the FAA.

"In December, Southwest Airlines announced it will cease operations at the Branson Airport in June after serving the airport for about 15 months."

And move all future connections to M. Graham Clark Airport.

I once accidentally entered Mountain Home Air force Base as my go to in my handheld GPS, instead of the municipal Mountain Home Airport. I figured it out before landing though

I saw another news clip today of several passengers saying they would NEVER fly with that flight crew again. I would, in a heartbeat.

GG - Finding Bermuda Dunes at night has my admiration! Many moons ago, after crossing the ridge line into the Springs from the east (and breaking a tail wire brace off the Bellanca upon hitting the updraft turbulence), trying to locate the runway in that sea of lights and freeways was a challenge! You could see KPSP to the north and KTRM to the south, but KUDD was a for this rookie Cal flier.

When the always procedurally correct pilot screws up, people die. I would fly with this guy.

Courierguy

I saw another news clip today of several passengers saying they would NEVER fly with that flight crew again. I would, in a heartbeat.

Really? Airlines have SOP's (Standard Operating Procedures) and use CRM (Crew Resource Management, like sharing a mental picture with each other to avoid these things). You have a PF (pilot flying) and PM (pilot monitoring). Every airline SOP requires that you brief the approach for your destination airport regardless if you decide to fly an instrument or visual approach. You brief the type of approach, charts, terrain, weather, operations and any possible threads. They also have the destination airport visually displayed on their Navigational Display, so they should have seen that they are several miles away from the correct airport. These guys were not even able to visually realize that the runway they were lined up with is nearly half or 2 thirds the size of any other runway they fly in. How about, hmmm something doesn't look right here and go around??? Even at 200' AGL there would have been plenty of time to go-around.

I guess when they touched down and saw the red runway end lights rushing towards them they went max manual braking pushing as hard as they could on the brake pedals. No pilot skill involved in that. The anti-skid took care of them not blowing their tires.

Its never one thing that leads to these incidents. Many holes have to line up in the proverbial swiss cheese for such a thing to happen and maybe one more hole lined up would have had the whole thing end up in disaster.

If this would have happened to me I would be facing right now a license suspension, a fine and I also would be unemployed. You just can not compare airline operations to recreational backcountry flying. You are held to a higher standard as this is your profession and you are responsible for the safety of hundreds of passengers in the back.

I'm with Pusher. No tolerance for this kind of error with 150 lives hanging in the balance. Reports say they stopped 300' short of the end of the runway. That's pretty close for airline flying. At the end of that runway is a 65' steep embankment down to an interstate freeway. Had the touchdown occurred a second or two later in the flare, that is where the aircraft would have ended up, with almost certain fatalities. I'm sure the voice recorder will show that they didn't follow basic SOPs during the approach. Just lazy and no, I wouldn't want to fly with them.

^ X3

BRD wrote:GG - Finding Bermuda Dunes at night has my admiration! Many moons ago, after crossing the ridge line into the Springs from the east (and breaking a tail wire brace off the Bellanca upon hitting the updraft turbulence), trying to locate the runway in that sea of lights and freeways was a challenge! You could see KPSP to the north and KTRM to the south, but KUDD was a for this rookie Cal flier.

We could have used the VOR but that would have been cheating. I think it's 10° left.

I found the reason

http://www.avweb.com/videos/Video-Exclusive-Report-Why-Airplanes-Land-at-the-Wrong-Airports221417-1.html