Scudrunners

I know, we all make mistakes  :-[

[url=http://news.delta.com/statement-flight- ... id-city-sd]http://news.delta.com/statement-flight- ... id-city-sd[/url]

That shit happens more than we think. Over the years someone always seems to manage landing at the wrong airport. Even in the Ottawa area landing at the "Prior" rather than at the "carp" and at KCIU rather than CYAM and the list seems to always be increasing. I'm thinking a good phrase would be "you can't always believe what you think you see out the front window"

As LC says, this happens all the time - and has for years.

Sometime, try doing a night VFR approach in Kansas:

[img width=500 height=411][/img]

On the A320 you can enter runways in the bearing/distance line on the Progress page. This gives distance to threshold. Multiply by 3 and you have a cross check of your vertical profile.

This should have caught the fact they were landing at the wrong airport.

Tuning the required Navigation aids for the Instrument approach should always be done - even if you are flying a visual approach.

Both procedures are standard everywhere I've flown - and good Airmanship even if not SOP.

Even if the runway doesn't have a LOC freq for the ILS ...

Ghetto navigation:

At least program one of the GPS's to the destination
airport so that you have distance and bearing to the
field, if not the runway threshold.

So when you think you are on a five mile final,
you can sanity-check the GPS for distance, and
the bearing should be the runway.

If the numbers are wildly off, you're going to
make the papers.

Normally the runway is part of the database - this is customisable by the operator.

A320 also has another feature where you create runways by inputting:-

-Threshold Lat/Long
-Runway heading
-Runway length

You can also create an extended centerline using the "radial in" feature. 

This crew should have had the runway inserted as part of the flightplan. It should have been obvious that there was something wrong just by looking at the the Nav display.

Eric,


I haven't "created" runways yet, but I assume it's on "data" page 2,  then waypoints?


Prog page is easiest.  Flew with a dude who was an autopilot commando. Never hand flies, but knew the FMS like nothing else. The reason I bring him up, is that his theory, you should input the FAF in Prog, not the landing runway.
His thought is, ATC will always vector you outside the FAF.  I guess he's never accepted a short approach.
As you can tell, I disagree.

[quote author=Nark link=topic=3564.msg9842#msg9842 date=1468206025]
Eric,


I haven't "created" runways yet, but I assume it's on "data" page 2,  then waypoints?


Prog page is easiest.  Flew with a dude who was an autopilot commando. Never hand flies, but knew the FMS like nothing else. The reason I bring him up, is that his theory, you should input the FAF in Prog, not the landing runway.
His thought is, ATC will always vector you outside the FAF.  I guess he's never accepted a short approach.
As you can tell, I disagree.[/quote]

Data Index 2/2 then line 3R Stored Runways - then line 5R New Runway to get the page with the data to be filled in (A340 - not sure if it is the same on A320)

A340 FCOM reference DSC-22_20-50-10-20 P64

Never seen anyone put the FAF in the Progress page - I guess your colleague doesn't fly in parts of the World where ATC is "Advisory Only" or in a non radar environment. Distance to FAF is basically useless info imho - distance to threshold is easy to understand. I'm a big fan of keeping things simple.

Thanks Eric, I'll have a look tomorrow night on the way home.

Speaking of vectoring, I got one of the worst clearances ever tonight. Told to speed up to 250 knots, maintain 4000' (field elevation was 3') until 3 mile final, cleared visual, contact tower...


Nope. Not even going to try to save that.


Second time around was much better.

Ya could do it in a steam driven 72 -- lmfaoooooooooooo