airline pilot "accidently" lands at military base

Seems as though an airline pilot did a major woopsie and landed at the wrong airport!!!!!! Besides the question of how could a pilot get so screwed up as to accidently land at a military base, the question arises of how susceptible are military bases to intruders?


ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) -- A Northwest Airlines flight that was headed to Rapid City, South Dakota, landed a few miles off course at Ellsworth Air Force Base, and passengers had to wait in the plane for more than three hours while their crew was interrogated.

www.cnn.com...

Here's another article:
wcco.com...

You know... I just think it's impossible to make this mistake. Even if this was an accidental landing at Ellsworth... why the hell would the passengers be ordered to not look out the window? Where did the spare crew come from... and where is the crew who landed the jet?

Seriously, radio navigation aides make this sort of mistake almost impossible. MY bet: The crew, while flying, saw something they weren't supposed to see (either a classified jet or a UFO).

Both articles mentioned the following:

Ellsworth controls all airplanes in airspace 40 miles around the base and clears flights to land at both the Rapid City airport and the base.

This sounds more like the Air Traffic Controller screwed up than the Pilot. You figure pilots land where they are told. I can't imagine that a pilot would attempt to land without an ATCs landing instructions.

Still makes me wonder how many AFBs also provide ATC support for local airports? Sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

Maybe it was all some sort of cover? Who knows what shady dealings goes on under the pretense of 'accident's.

atc, pilot error?.....look the pilots fly the same routs dont they ?...guy should have known where he was...and didnt the co pilot speak up in case of " f" up?...../the atc should have caught it....the atc for the air base should have warned em off.....or had em intercepted.?....were they escorted?.....as for not looking out the windows....what do you expect...they werent supposed to be there ...

This is funny. But I feel pitty for the pilot because he will never hear the end of this one. :-)

Its a precurser to somthing else, obviouisly orchistrated (speculation) for somthing thats going to happen soon or a reason for the powers that be to implement somthing that would suposedly prevent it from happening. unless the runway for public was right next to military the in that case oops!

Yeah... as i said in the ATSNews section, modern radio navigational aides make it impossible to land at the wrong airfield. If you (and your crew) are competent enough to actually land a jet... then you're surely aware of where you actually are.

This must be a cover story of some sort. If it was just simple pilot error the captain of the jet would have been replaced... but there would have been no need for a complete replacement crew.

My guess is that these poor guys are in a cell somewhere being told that they didn't actually see something...

Well, maybe he was drunk. Had a little to much at the pilot bar, or maybe had a stash in the cockpit. . . Kinda like when you drive home from the bar, pull into your neighbours driveway and get confused about why your key won't open your door. . . My neighbours did that once. . . came to my house. . . If they were neighbouring airports, and he was drunk.....

if he was drunk the jet would be a pile of flaming debris at the end of the runway (if he WAS drunk and landed, though, he's the best pilot of all time)...


I doubt that his entire flight crew was drunk... and the witnesses didn't mention anything about a drunk voice over the intercom.

i didnt know about that! in that case im gona hafto go for the ufo thing, or it was an experiment of some sort, maby they did somthing to the pasengers, or like you mentioned the saw somthing they wernt suposed to see, like a mexican ufo berage or somthing. the military dont got experimental craft the stuff they got goes! and been goin for over fifty years! (see Nicoli Tesla) or better yet check this out! www.laesieworks.com... these are some of the old junk tin cans we had before they implemented hitlers Vril engine technolodgy that was given to Hitler through a sicic medium they imprted the techs to the us see project paperclip (i dont know where they come up witht these names from) also look at these these vril craft used anti gravity and they were super fast but sort of scruby for combat manuvering as they could only make sharp angle turns of well 90% right or somthing like that. the vril were super duper fast space ready/capable i belive the word the used was... i cant remember but these thing could get around the world in two hours and to mars in two days! here you read it! www.laesieworks.com... theres plety on these things on the web in the rite places its there

quoted from the CNN article:
"Eventually, the captain and first officer were replaced by a different Northwest crew for the short hop to the right airport"

The same thing was mentioned by the other articles.

PS: I imagine that this could have been a war on terrorism related thing... though the story to back that would be more complicated that just "the crew saw something they weren't supposed to see" version.

It also brings to mind the 9/11 scenario in which the actual flights were diverted to a military base while decoys hit the towers ( far-fetched but somehow not any more so than the official story).

Maybe the big terror attack that Bush/Ashcroft keep telling us to be very afraid of got aborted....

it was so full of holes, aperantly those people sat there for three hours being "Debriefed" by military officials. sounds like that plane was being "Tailed" by UFO's. wouldnt be the first time why else would they be debriefing the crew and passengers? any way one day people might get on planes and all be dropped of at military bases."Camps" guess who "owns" "all" the airlines anyway, give you a hint... one entinty same people own the military and the fed. do some research.

also, wouldnt the air controllers at ellsworth be on the horn to the pilots telling them they are on approach to the wrong airport??? didnt the air controlers at the civilian airport tell the pilots they were going down on the wrong airport? wouldnt an unauthorized plane approaching on a military base cause some sort of defense plan to excecute? could any terrorist drive a jet into one of military bases without being stopped? could the chinese or some other government do a low level fly by without being stopped? the whole thing just doesnt make sense.

Originally posted by spangbr
also, wouldnt the air controllers at ellsworth be on the horn to the pilots telling them they are on approach to the wrong airport??? didnt the air controlers at the civilian airport tell the pilots they were going down on the wrong airport?

Read my post above. Ellsworth performs ATC duties for both the AFB and the civilian airport. My take on it was that the ATC screwed up and directed a civie plane to the AFB. This would explain why there was no alert or warning to the pilots.

The pilots would still have known that they were headed towards the wrong airport.

Each airport has its own radio beacon frequency. When a pilot prepares to land... even when being directed by ATC.. he essentially 'tunes' into that signal and ensures that he's lined up for it (i'm simplifying things here). He also is able to reference a small 'booklet' that has diagrams of the airfield he is landing at. These two things (along with other stuff) should have told him that he was being directed to the wrong airstrip... at the very least, when he was on approach and saw a bunch of B-1s lined up on the tarmac instead of 737s he should have known what was up.

I still think that the crew saw something in flight that made the military want to detain them.

[edit on 21-6-2004 by onlyinmydreams]

so the pilots didnt notice that the airport looked "different"? still doesnt make sense. also dont the military and civilian planes use different frequencies and transponders?

Originally posted by onlyinmydreams
... at the very least, when he was on approach and saw a bunch of B-1s lined up on the tarmac instead of 737s he should have known what was up.

I agree, but if, as the base noted, the plane came out of a cloud approaching the base landing strip instead of the airport, then the pilot was pretty much committed to landing at that point.

I still think that the crew saw something in flight that made the military want to detain them.

I think the jury's still out on this one and we need more info. But sometimes the simplest explanation is correct. I think ATC misidentified the civilian plane as military, gave them landing instructions at the base and the pilot didn't question those instructions. The flight crew was hauled off for drug-testing as SOP as was, most likely, the ATC.

At least that is my hope.