Originally posted at The Sky Behind Me blog January 14th 2014.
Oooops… Recently (and once again) a commercial airliner landed at the wrong airport. Southwest flight #4013 from Chicago enroute to Branson Missouri landed at a nearby college airstrip instead. This is reminiscent of a cockpit mistake in a similar incident many years ago in Columbus Ohio, my home town. In that episode, a Trans World Airlines 707 landed at Ohio State University’s Don Scott Field, fifteen miles northwest of Port Columbus, the plane’s scheduled destination. Why does this continue to happen? What can prevent it? Here’s one reason it happens, and one way to lower the possibilities.