[az_gila]

My guess, a visual approach, at night. The runway alignment for both airports is the same or very close. 15-20 miles out the pilot sees the beacon for the wrong airport and reports airport in sight. Is cleared for the visual approach and, following the wrong rotating beacon, lands at the wrong airport.

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It was a night landing, just after 7 pm.

The ground track is interesting though, looks like it was heading directly for PTK (not BRG) before ATC radar lost it.

I wonder if they selected the destination airport in their avionics by name - Branson - rather than by identifier?

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA4013/history/20140112/2145Z/KMDW/KBBG

It also looks like they got a direct clearance from the MAP VOR and bypassed the flight plan DGD VOR.

I bet this is when the avionics directed error occurred...:^)

[ops33]

Branson airport runways are 32/14, PTK runways are 30/12. Pretty close. Article did not say which runway the aircraft was landing on but passengers afterwards stated the aircraft almost went off a cliff. The ground does slope down off the departure end of runway 30 so perhaps the pilot was cleared for a visual to Branson runway 32 but flew and landed on runway 30 at PTK. Still, looks like two pilots are going to be looking for new jobs.