A good story

Don - huh, huh, that's a good one! :-)))

Have a nice day!

Paweł

patrick206

Greg - It's called certificate suspension.

Yep, that's it.

Thank, Cap.

British Airways 747 is on final onto Munich.

Captain to Tower:

”BA #### heavy requesting permission to land”.

Tower to flight, in irritated tone:

”Switch to German, BA#####, haven’t you flown to Munich before?”

”Yes I have, but it was a long time ago in a different Boeing and I didn’t stick around”.

Then, there is the old joke, I have heard attributed to Irish pilots (in britain), Polish pilots elsewhere, but is actually a comment about the ground radar operator.  I'll shorten it a bit.  This guy was on a GCA approach somewhere over Europe.  GCA guy says-"You're doing fine.  In line for the runway, glideslope okay... looking good... a bit high, drop it down a bit."

Then we dropped out of the overcast, and there was this big runway- 150 feet long and 5000 feet wide!

Kirke W. Comstock

UAL 1952- 2000

GM -

I heard quite a lot about that DC-8 story. A neighbor that became a life long friend was an engineer at UAL, at the time he was in Chicago. I'll bet your Dad knew him, Ed Titus, his wife Anne was the assistant to the company flight physician. Ed was also involved in figuring out a way to get a four engine jet, out of an airport for 172's and light twins.

An old airline joke was when a Captain would make a mistake like that, he would be promoted to a base Chief Pilot position. That way he would have very little time to fly, effective risk management.

Greg - It's called certificate suspension.

Patrick

I'm based at KPDX and fly out of there every workday. I've heard that story many times before. Its really nice to hear/see some background to the incedent. 

Thanks!

Awesome story, Bill......I love it.

BTW, these days wrong airport events aren't as fun as the good 'ol days. Back then it was an embarrassment to the front office crew and an inconvenience to passengers.

These days, licenses get pulled, or at least whatever you call it when a license is revoked for a period of time. Doggone vocabulary senior moment.

FAA has no sense of humor any more.

Stories of airliners landing at wrong airport are pretty common, but lack the personal story to go with it.  Great post.

Most of those wrong airport events I have heard of seemed to be when there is a military field at the destination city, and the pilots mistake the military field for the civilian one.  The military is usually pretty unhappy :-(

Hello!

We had something like that a few years ago in Poznan, Poland. Well the main airport for the city is called Lawica - oldest active airport in Poland. We also have a placed called Krzesiny - it's an air force base, and a former factory airstrip of the Focke Wulf Werke. When approaching Lawica you follow a procedure with a turn that is supposed to line you up with the runway. But while you're turning you might see the runway of Krzesiny - and that's what happened to a Turkish airliner, and the strip was lit up and stuff, so they just landed there. Must have been pretty surprised to see lots of military vehicles surrounding the aircraft! After lots of checks and deliberations they decided to take off again and land the aircraft together with passengers some 20 kilometers away, this time on the correct strip!

Have a nice day

Paweł

That's just wild. Have to ask, though, was the crew that goofed "freed up for other opportunities"?

Great story GM - looks like she cleared with room to spare, though must have been a bit unnerving for pops!  Bet he was working the slide-rule all the way down the taxi-way ;)

Would make a fantastic forced perspective box diorama from the tower perspective.