Pilots heading to wrong airport -- not as uncommon as you might think.

[marmar]

WASHINGTON (AP) - Do you know the way to San Jose? Quite a few airline pilots apparently don't.

On at least 150 flights, including one involving a Southwest Airlines jet last month in Missouri and a jumbo cargo plane last fall in Kansas, U.S. commercial air carriers have either landed at the wrong airport or started to land and realized their mistake in time, according to a search by The Associated Press of government safety databases and media reports since the early 1990s.

A particular trouble spot is San Jose, Calif. The list of landing mistakes includes six reports of pilots preparing to land at Moffett Field, a joint civilian-military airport, when they meant to go to Mineta San Jose International Airport, about 10 miles to the southeast. The airports are south of San Francisco in California's Silicon Valley.

"This event occurs several times every winter in bad weather when we work on Runway 12," a San Jose airport tower controller said in a November 2012 report describing how an airliner headed for Moffett after being cleared to land at San Jose. A controller at a different facility who noticed the impending landing on radar warned his colleagues with a telephone hotline that piped his voice directly into the San Jose tower's loudspeakers. The plane was waved off in time. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_289563/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=Q8v7pyKf

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. A gas holder in London has a large 'LH' and arrow painted on it to point to Heathrow

http://www.flickr.com/photos/69688537@N02/6404891955/

A major gas works manufacturing town gas was located between the railway and the canal. In 1932 a large gasholder was built which has been a noticeable landmark ever since as it can be easily observed from a long distance away. Painted on the north east side of the gasholder are the large letters 'LH' and an arrow to assist pilots locate Heathrow Airport's (now closed) runway 23 when making visual approaches. The letters were painted in the mid 1960s after a number of pilots became confused between Heathrow and the nearby RAF Northolt (which has a similar, though smaller, gasholder under its approach at Harrow). Northolt has a much shorter runway and is not suitable for very large aircraft although one Boeing 707 did land at Northolt by mistake [9] and a number of other aircraft had to be warned off by air traffic control at the last minute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southall#Twentieth_century

N725PA mistook RAF Northolt for London Airport and landed in error; after off-loading all 41 passengers and with minimum fuel, it departed for the short flight to LAP two hours later while the Police closed the A40 Main Road during its departure.

http://www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1001607

[Blue_Tires]

2. It's not a big shock

especially in places where airports close to one another lie across the same heading

[quinnox]

3. I have seen some air crash investigation episodes where this proved a fatal mistake

It is very important the pilots know where they are going, and plot the planes course correctly, otherwise its very easy to end up flying into a mountain or in a valley where there is little maneuvering room and a crash will happen.

[treestar]

4. That's scary

Seriously.