How does this happen ? Aren’t the pilots in contact with the controllers/ tower ?
How does this happen ? Aren’t the pilots in contact with the controllers/ tower ?
ATC clears them for a visual approach ... pilots visually spot the runway at Ellsworth, which is parallel to the Rapid City runway, and separated by about 10 miles. Pilots don’t crosscheck ILS or other navaids.
It’s happened before.
Happens periodically in Tucson, the main TIA runway and the main DM runway are at almost the exact same angle, and less than a minute apart at jet speed. Yes they’re in communication with but when the distance is just a couple of miles by the time anybody notices you’re on the wrong approach you’ve probably already touched down.
Yes, but the crew may have been switched over to Tower when they said they have the runway in sight (wrong runway).
ATC should have noted something amiss, but who knows, maybe they were distracted by personal conversations or other traffic (not good).
The crew were vectored until they saw what they thought was the correct runway and pad-locked onto it. Because they pad-locked on the wrong runway and did not see the correct runway, they landed at the wrong one.
The aircrew screwed up by a) misidentifying the wrong runway as their destination, and b) not verifying that they were seeing with on-board nav/aides.
ATC/Tower also share some blame as they should have noted the aircraft over-shooting and heading to the wrong runway.
The article says that they were in contact with Ellsworth Approach control. That's because they also service the Rapid City airport.
The plane would have been "handed off" to the Rapid City tower. I'm surprised the tower didn't notice they were lined up on the wrong runway.