Ryanair lands at wrong airport

[flyincanuck]

Ryanair flight lands at wrong UK airfield

An aircraft operating a Ryanair flight landed today by mistake at a virtually-disused army airfield in Northern Ireland.

Ryanair refuses to comment, but the Police Service of Northern Ireland says the aircraft landed at Ballykelly airfield, known locally as Shackleton Barracks, at 14:47 today instead of its intended destination of nearby City of Derry airport in Londonderry.

The exact flight is not known, but unconfirmed suggestions are that it had come from Liverpool in England, which is consistent with it being Ryanair flight 9884 due at Derry at 14:25.

Police at nearby Limavady say: "[Airfield staff] are trying to find steps to get the passengers off and then they are going to bus the passengers to Derry. Apparently it’s too heavy to take off again while it’s loaded so they are going to fly it out when the passengers are off.”

The police are unable to confirm the identity of the aircraft, although another unconfirmed report suggests it is an Airbus A320 of Irish carrier Eirjet operating on behalf of Ryanair, which has an all-Boeing 737 fleet.

Ballykelly is lightly used by UK Army Air Corps and Royal Air Force helicopters and as a sport airfield. A rail line crosses the air field (pictured below).


© Alan Newble Railway Photo Resource Site


Derry charts warn pilots against the risk of confusion between the two airfields. Derry has a 1,670m (5,480ft) runway (08/26), with precision approach path indicators (PAPI) on 26, and an ILS/DME. Ballykelly airfield details are not immediately available.

http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles/20 ... field.html

[EI-EIO]

Ironically, it's something everyone seems to have expected an actual Ryanair flight, with their overworked stressed out pilot group, to do rather than a wetleased subbie! Apparently LDY's ILS was down which didn't help.

Important part is everyone is okay, physically anyway - dunno about the front end's careers though.

[...]

Here's what they're saying on Pprune

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=219465

[Hedley]

This happens all the time. Air Canada tried to land at the wrong airport in BC last year, and frequently lands on the taxiway instead of the runway at SeaTac.

[complexintentions]

I believe it was Jazz that landed on the taxiway in SeaTac, but regardless, a little more "there but for the grace of God go I" is probably in order...

[32a]

Crews who fly IFR and to familiar airports all the time should be twice as careful when they try practicing their long-lost skills of VFR flying.

I've come close to landing on the wrong runway and chuckled to see others who have had set up to wrong airports. Training for "captaincy" in CC130s, an instructor once told me the three secrets to successful upgrade checkride: crew control; cruise control; and never do a visual approach.

Airline pilots are used to flying to the same airport day-after-day. They fly IFR most of the time and the same airport show up in the expected place, all of the time. Forced to transition to their long lost VFR navigation skills, they do, albeit rarely, experience "momentary disorientation" and the wrong airport shows up. Someone on Pprune made a list of these incidents: http://www.thirdamendment.com/wrongway.html

In the "RyanAir" incident, apparently it was a sub-contractor flying; they had overshot and were now setting up for a visual circuit. The incident is still under investigation.

[greenwich]

Hey, AC 'almost' did it in the Okanagen in 2003!

They cancelled IFR heading into Kelowna, only to realize at the last minute that they were setting-up for landing at Vernon...not Kelowna.

They powered-up, went around, and flew down the valley VFR landing in Kelowna a few minutes later. Scared the sh1t out of a bunch of passengers.

Word was that thay got their 'walking papers' within a few hours.

AC did a hell of a job sweeping it under the carpet! Pretty much no one outside of Vernon and Kelowna ever heard about the incident.

G

[WS739]

G your right on the money...If it werent for Kelowna ATC saying we dont have you as a target they would of landed in CYVK!

Apparently AC called final and ATC still had no target so they overshot!!!

Freind was in a boat on the other end of the runway and almost shit his pants when he saw the 319 set up for final!!

Crew was flown to YYZ and terminated!!!( as per ac staff )

Ws739

[grimey]

I like this one from the US...

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/200 ... port_x.htm

ST. PAUL (AP) — Robert Morrell wondered what was up after his Northwest Airlines flight touched down.
Nobody from the flight crew got on the intercom to welcome passengers to Rapid City, S.D. He looked out the window and saw barracks-like structures and military officials. And then the crew told passengers to pull down their window shades.

[Chop&Drop]

Airbus A319

[Lommer]

http://www.tsb.gc.ca/en/reports/air/200 ... 3P0259.pdf

There's the TSB report for the AC incident. It's actually pretty rediculous considering:
-Vernon has a 3300' runway that's almost perpendicular to kelowna's 7300' runway
-The captain had flown into kelowna the week before
-the geography is pretty different
-the instrument approach was serviceable, just not available due to fire fighting activity in the overshoot (i.e. AC could've used it if they remained VFR)

Just another incident that goes to show you how easy it is to seriously screw up if you get complacent in your flying.

[threepoint]

G your right on the money...If it werent for Kelowna ATC saying we dont have you as a target they would of landed in CYVK!

Apparently AC called final and ATC still had no target so they overshot!!!

Freind was in a boat on the other end of the runway and almost shit his pants when he saw the 319 set up for final!!

Crew was flown to YYZ and terminated!!!( as per ac staff )

Ws739

OK, I think somebody needs to read the TSB report before speculating here. The FO initiated the overshoot, not ATC. The crew landed in Kelowna and continued on to their next sched destination in the same plane. Are you sure they were fired and not just disciplined?
Funny how somebody above thought it happened last year (it was August 2003) and that 'almost nobody heard about the event". It was pretty well reported...perhaps you weren't paying attention, or were focused on the wildfires.

[Zatopec]

Some years ago, Jazz landed in Rimouski heading into Mont-Joli. Both airports are in the same MF, but 20 miles apart..

[C-GPME]

Poor guys. I remember how embarrassed i was when i landed at person airport thinking it was toronto island.

Just kidding.

Anyway, important part is everyone is ok, and one day will be able to laugh about this occurance

[grimey]

So in addition to all the geographic cues mentioned above, doesn't an A319 also paint all kinds of things in yellow and magenta and blue on the nav displays in front of the pilots? Wouldn't it have shown them flying towards an airport that was totally out of whack? Don't tell me neither crew member looked down at the displays for the last 5 mins of their flight?

From the investigation report posted above:

"2. The first officer was aware from his cockpit displays that considerable distance
remained to the Kelowna Airport. He was, however, initially distracted by radio calls
and was slow to intervene in the approach to the Vernon Airport."

So yea.

[Hedley]

landed at pearson airport thinking it was toronto island

Don't laugh, that's happened before. A few years back, a middle-aged woman landed a C-150 at pearson, thinking she was at Brampton.

Didn't talk to anybody at Pearson, legend has it that she was taking vectors from Brampton unicom (!) at the time.

If I had done something that dumb, I'd be looking at a year revocation of licence - at least.

Transport in it's infinte wisdom, decided to fine her $100, which is probably less than the landing fee at Pearson.

I'm not making this up. Sure wish I was.