How Could a Boeing 747 Crew Err So Badly?

Thursday, November 21, 2013 at 09:25 PM ET

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Key Takeaways:

A Boeing 747 Dreamlifter recently landed at the wrong airport, continuing a pattern of large aircraft (including C-17s and B-52s) making significant navigational blunders.
A major concern is the prolonged time and difficulty crews experience in realizing they've made a positional error, even after landing, often requiring external verification.
The author highlights that modern general aviation aircraft, with advanced GPS and mapping systems like Garmin G1000 and ForeFlight, offer superior situational awareness that would prevent such mistakes, advocating for similar upgrades in larger aircraft.

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The odd case of a Boeing 747 Dreamlifter mistakenly landing at Wichita’s Jabara Airport instead of its intended destination, McConnell Air Force Base about 7 miles to the south, wasn’t the first time the crew of a mammoth jet made such a colossal positional error.

You might remember our story last year about a C-17 bound for MacDill Air Force Base in Florida that mistakenly landed at the much smaller Peter O. Knight Airport in Tampa. In 2004 at the Farnborough Airshow, I watched as a U.S. B-52 bomber that was supposed to perform a low pass missed the airport and instead did a fly-by at unsuspecting Blackbushe Airport five miles away.