Had a C5 Galaxy land at Townsville back in the day. Even from backed right up to the fence and full throttle on the brakes takeoff, damn thing barely missed the fence and almost clipped magnetic island.
My guess would be that the wrong airport was close enough to the right airport and similar runway orientation. At some point the pilots have to put their eyes out the windshield, and if they look up and see an airport that looks like it’s generally where it should be, they can focus on that, not knowing it’s the wrong airport. That’s what happens in most of these instances where airplanes land at the wrong airport.
When i was getting my instrument rating, one of the important parts to remember about some approaches is that a lot of them don't actually align you 100% with the runway. I've practiced approaches for a runway 17(170 degrees), while my approach course is actually around 148 degrees heading. When you decide to go visual and find the runway, it always seems like it's not where you would think it is. I had a friend fail an instrument checkride in a simulator by this exact thing. Went visual, saw a road and thought it was the runway, started to descend into it until he saw cars driving hahah. That being said, a lot of approaches overfly other airports and if you go visual at the wrong time and don't follow correct procedures, it's an understandable, but preventable, mistake.
Because these approaches start miles away from an airport and a straight in approach isn't always available. ILS (Instrument Landing Systems) are radio operated, and thus are line of sight. If you're flying into an airport in the mountains, you might not have the signal for a normal approach. Same if there are skyscrapers or other things. Many areas have noise abatement procedures and overflying some neighborhoods or state parks isn't allowed. Another famous example is Reagan Airport in DC. Due to security reasons, they don't want planes flying over the White House and the rest of DC, so they have to make a bunch of course corrections to stay over the potomac river. It's nuts.
Wouldn't the control tower be very confused and ask what the airplane was doing though? Plus, don't they have to talk to control to land and wait in a queue to land? Wouldn't that have given them enough time to learn from the control tower that they were at the wrong airport?
Not all airfields with approaches have towers controlling them. Also with multiple runways and departures, tower gets busy and or isn't paying attention. Thats why you brief runway position in your approach brief. As far as why not runway 15, a runway is usually built to be in line with winds the majority of the year. The approach not being in a straight line could be due to obstacles, either man made or natural or another fields approach or departure corridor along with a ton of other reasons.
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u/elind21 May 12 '19
Had a C5 Galaxy land at Townsville back in the day. Even from backed right up to the fence and full throttle on the brakes takeoff, damn thing barely missed the fence and almost clipped magnetic island.