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 mistakenly landed at Wichita's Jabara Airport instead of its intended destination, McConnell Air Force Base, following similar incidents involving other large military and cargo jets.
A concerning aspect of the Dreamlifter incident was the crew's prolonged difficulty in identifying their actual landing location, even after stopping on the runway.
The author suggests that modern general aviation avionics offer far superior situational awareness, making such navigational errors improbable for smaller aircraft and highlighting the need for improved cockpit modernization in larger, older 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.