Comments

I pointed out the error in mileage between the airports because if the distance had been less than 5 miles as noted in the article, the pilots would probably have been in a totally different environment. I.e. if landing to the north, the flight would be nearly above both airports at the same moment. But if landing to the south and being vectored to final, the small airport would have been maybe five miles ahead, and the larger airport about 15. Both airports have NE/SW runways, and the smaller airport is NE of the larger. According to weather underground, the winds last Tue evening would seem to have favored a landing on runway 21 at North Central, so if the flight had been vectored on a long final to runway 21 at North Central, it could have been positioned on an approximate 5 mile final to runway 23 at Fairmont. The runway at Fairmont sort of points to the runway at North Central. I'm not excusing the pilots, but I'm also not necessarily blaming them 100%. Controllers are our partners in achieving a safe flight and they are supposed to monitor a few things too. Because of the minimal information in the article, we just don't know what was going on between the pilot and controllers. But these things do happen at all levels - note the Delta jet that landed inadvertently at MacDill Air Force base June 1980 instead of Tampa International. Thankfully no one was injured in this incident. As far as I'm concerned, this is a lesson we need to study not just in how pilots should perform, but in how pilots and controllers perform together. Usually one catches the mistakes of the other, but not always and we need to remember that. You know the pilots will review their procedures. I am wondering about the other side too - was there some sort of insidious sequence that lead to this incident which if we understand, we can use to establish better procedures in and out of the cockpit. Stephen Pope - will you be adding additional information as it is developed? Thanks.

I meant to include that all of the temporary conditions mentioned in my comment yesterday 12/27/12 were included in notams. The FBO closure and unavailability of fuel are still current notams: IJD 07/004 IJD SVC FBO CLSD IJD 05/003 IJD SVC FUEL NOT AVBL. So a quick call via remote communications outlet to flight service for notams is just as important for a diversion as it is for general flight planning.