Wrong Airport, Almost

Even with in-cockpit traffic, CTAF, moving maps and ATC’s help, we can get momentarily lost and disoriented, and forget to cancel IFR.

Editorial Staff

Tuesday, June 04, 2024 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

A pilot, hyper-focused on locating local traffic amidst turbulence and ambiguous ADS-B, inadvertently lined up to land at the wrong airport, missing clear visual cues.
The intense focus on traffic also led the pilot to forget to cancel their IFR flight plan, prompting an inquiry from ATC after landing.
The experience highlights the dangers of target fixation and task saturation, underscoring the importance of maintaining comprehensive situational awareness to avoid critical errors like airport misidentification and procedural oversights.

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I was letting down toward my destination airport in good VFR, on an IFR flight plan. Listening to the CTAF on the other radio, I realized there was a Cessna in the traffic pattern along with another arrival, just a few miles ahead. I had to slow down in the descent for the turbulence, and was busy looking for the traffic. I had the airport in sight but couldn’t spot the traffic, which was odd.

The other arriving airplane reported a five-mile final, which, coincidently, was where I was in relation to the runway I had spotted. But I couldn’t see him. There was enough ambiguity in my ADS-B traffic display that I couldn’t be sure about the other airplane’s position.