Littlecub wrote:Separate:

Karlene Petitt, a pilot based in Seattle, tweeted out a picture of herself standing in front of a Dreamlifter, and wrote: "Women pilots don't land at the wrong airport. We ask for directions!"

That's funny right there

The Douglas product could be landed impressively short as well, the poor old engines might be toast after this effort though...?

Just jumping in for a thought. (Not sure if this was mentioned). But, when the pilots were on short final and had visual for the airport, wouldn't you think that at that point something didn't look right? Go full throttle, gear up and go missed approach and give this a second thought once they are back in touch with ATC and double check all their approach to the correct airport?

I'm thinking (assuming) these were high time pilots that have umpteen million landings and would "Shirley" know the difference between a 7k ft long runway from a 10+k ft runway from just 1-5 miles away. Your think? I'm kinda thinking I might would know the deference.

There's a picture floating around on Facebook showing the two runways on Google Maps. Wish I could show it here. But I'm on my iPhone right now. I shared the link on my FB page.

Please note (most of you know me). I'm not a commercial pilot and never flown into either of these airports on a cloudy, nasty night. Just my theory/thoughts/bench flying/Monday quarter backing.

I'm thinking Gump is right. Those two will loose their ATP certs and their jobs. As was pointed out, landing on the wrong runway in a heavy jet is a recipe for major disaster. Just because one didn't happen doesn't mean the FAA is going to let it go.

With all the emphasis on over reliance on automation recently due to the Asiana accident at SFO, I suspect the automation all the time advocates in the FAA and manufacturers will argue this one is a classic case where automation would have prevented this screw up. I certainly do not agree with that view, but there are a lot of folks out there who believe that the human pilot is the biggest problem in airline operations.

MTV

There has been some criticism/mockery/derision/etc. for the pilot or co-pilot's mic conversation and his series of mix-ups on simple things like east/west and north/south......
I expect on rollout-near the end or so-that the pilots' next immediate follow-on thought to "OH, !&#£%$&!, WRONG AIRPORT!! Was the realization that a head twisting sharp left turn career change was VERY! imminent, and the resultant flood of epinephrine/adrenalin to their brains, with the brains "search engines' " response to the question "How can I salvage/save/reverse this screw up?", the brain's answer kept coming up "NOT POSSIBLE".... Well, this loop was running in his head in the background, and kept repeatedly pushing its way to the foreground the whole time he was trying to regain situational awareness-in relation to location.
There would be a "traffic jam" of competing/convergent multi-topical related thoughts competeing and interfereing with cogent thought process.
Anyhow, whatever was happening in their brains-it couldn't have been pleasant.....

Don't ask me how I think I know......

Not to mention the external distractors (the conversation on going in the cockpit about where they were). You hit the nail on the head. It was complete loss of SA. I just had a brush with this last week. On my annual check ride at work in the sim, we pushed back from CLT and got our taxi clearance. Both the captain and I were having a really hard time figuring out exactly where we were and where the spot was we were to taxi to. Things just didn't look right as we tried to reconcile the airport diagram with what we were seeing out the window. About then, everyone realized that was because we were in JFK, not CLT! The sim had for some reason started us in JFK. All of a sudden, things looked familiar with a few exceptions. This is a small example that briefly flustered us. I can't imagine how flustered they were!

I left that web address for Airline pilots forum earlier for the humor.
WOW! On the last several pages it devolved into being vicious at each other.

I am very glad this site is pretty easy going overall!

Web press article on how it "might" have happened:
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/11/bo ... rport/all/

Some of the readers comments on the above article are just as dumb as the original mistake. I've flown 747's over 20 years and haven't done that one yet. I'm thankful for those Boeing carbon fiber brakes, they are the hero's in this incident. Two guys looking for a job is the only outcome of this besides the embarrassing publicity and moving the a/c over to McConnell. When you sign a flight release you are saying you are familiar with the route and arrival and alternate airports, that's in the FAR's.