C-17 at wrong airport?

[CAMike]

And a callsign is born.

Oh do tell... c/s "WONGWAY"?

Or does the AF allow such mean spirited call signs?

 

[MasterBates]

No, he'd actually get a cool callsign like DESTROYER.

 

[jmcquate]

I can imagine the thoughts going thru his head after he initiated the thrust reversers and stomped on the brakes looking at all of the bug smashers on the ramp.

 

[Flugelman]

I can imagine the thoughts going thru his head after he initiated the thrust reversers and stomped on the brakes looking at all of the bug smashers on the ramp.

He had a "Klong".

As defined in one of William Safire's political novels, A "Klong" is the rush of shit to your heart when you realize you've totally screwed up, there's no way to fix it, and everyone knows about it.

 

[usmarinemike]

Dying to know the "rest of the story" behind this one.

The more I think about it, the more it absolutely baffles me. Sometimes things happen that are b beyond your control, or the Swiss cheese just doesn't work out for you, but this is ridiculous.

 

[Brett327]

I've definitely bit off on the wrong field before, looking outside, but your instruments are your friends in those situations. Easy to do in some places. If the needle that's pointing to the navaid at your desired point of landing is 90 degrees off when you roll into the groove, time to reevaluate.

 

[BusyBee604]

A "Klong" is the rush of shit to your heart when you realize you've totally screwed up, there's no way to fix it, and everyone knows about it.

A "Klong" is when you take off at night in an A-4C, thinking your canopy lock handle is over center, when at ~100 kts. your canopy departs (arming the seat with the face curtain flapping in the breeze), slicing off the top 6" of the vertstab....but luckily, it's a 13,500' rwy, so allowing a no problem abort! That's a Klong...don't ask me how I know!
BzB

 

[mmx1]

Didn't a Southwest 737 land at an OLF that was 3 miles short of final to the regional airport? At least, that's how I remember the story going.

 

[Pags]

Been there, done that.

 

[SynixMan]

People mistake Cabiness OLF in Corpus enough with Corpus International that there's a permanent NOTAM about it. Cabiness is oriented the same as Corpus, not that hard to do on the visual I'd imagine.

 

[armada1651]

Didn't a Southwest 737 land at an OLF that was 3 miles short of final to the regional airport? At least, that's how I remember the story going.

People mistake Cabiness OLF in Corpus enough with Corpus International that there's a permanent NOTAM about it. Cabiness is oriented the same as Corpus, not that hard to do on the visual I'd imagine.

Yep.

 

[KBayDog]

Speaking of landing at the wrong airport:

Oceanside-bound aircraft have accidentally landed at Pendleton a few times. Imperial County birds have occasionally, erroneously landed at El Centro.

However, KNSE T-6s mistakenly land at KNDZ every Sunday night from 1800-2200.

 

[Catmando]

Never landed on the wrong boat or the wrong airport..... but I can't believe the number of times I tried.

 

[Swanee]

I tried to land at Briggs instead of KELP once. That was fun. Instruments saved my ass (wow, that ain't right- I'm not pointed where I thought I was) I wonder why he didn't elect to go around when he realized he didn't have as much runway as he was expecting...

 

[Uncle Fester]

I can understand mistaking one little field for another, esp at night, but this was day, yes? None of the three (?) guys in the cockpit looked outside on final and said "Wait...MacDill is one short runway and a bunch of bugsmashers?" Stories like this, there's always some extra puzzle piece.

I like to imagine some heartily disliked LtCol had the controls, and the JO copilot thought, "He really thinks that's MacDill he's lining up on...You know what? Fuck it...imma let that asshole do it. He signed for the plane."