A Boeing 747 Dreamlifter mistakenly landed at Jabara Field instead of its intended destination, McConnell Air Force Base, due to the airports' close proximity and nearly identical north-south runway orientations.
The error was facilitated by difficulties in visual identification at night, psychological factors like confirmation bias (disregarding instruments after visual acquisition), and the pilots potentially switching from an instrument approach to a visual one, missing distinct cues like McConnell's parallel runways and advanced lighting.
Such incidents are not uncommon, with several instances of large aircraft landing at incorrect, smaller airports occurring worldwide in recent years, highlighting the ongoing challenge of distinguishing airfields.
Now that the world knows the story of the Boeing 747 Dreamlifter that landed at the wrong Wichita-area airport on Wednesday night, everybody is asking the same question: how could it have happened? That is, how could a professional crew of a large cargo airliner get it so wrong?
The answer is, it’s all too easy to do.
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A commercial pilot, Isabel Goyer has been flying for more than 40 years, with hundreds of different aircraft in her logbook and thousands of hours. An award-winning aviation writer, photographer and editor, Ms. Goyer led teams at Sport Pilot, Air Progress and Flying before coming to Plane & Pilot in 2015.
