As if there aren't enough reasons to hate flying, TAAG Angola Airlines added another to the list when one of its pilots landed at the wrong airport.
Oops.
The Boeing 737 was to land at Lusaka International Airport in Zambia but instead touched down 10 miles away at an airfield used by the country's air force. The pilot realized he'd screwed up just before landing - the fighter jets had to be the first clue - but worried that lifting off again would panic his oblivious passengers. He proceeded with the landing and the airline loaded everyone onto a bus for the ride to Lusaka International.
"The pilot had to land because he was already descending at City Airport," a source at the airport said, according to one news account. "We had to quickly inform people at the Lusaka International Airport because they were wondering where the plane was."
The national airline of Angola is a textbook example of how not to run an airline. It's so bad it's been banned from flying in the European Union because of consistent safety lapses. Two years ago, a TAAG plane overshot the runway in M'Banza, Congo and crashed into a building, killing five people and injuring 66. Still, TAAG is considered one of Africa's better airlines, in part because it buys new, not used, aircraft.
The pilot has been suspended pending an investigation, and it's disturbing to know last week's mix-up in Zambia is just the latest example of pilots landing at the wrong airport.
In 1996, a Continental Express commuter flight bound for Lake Charles, Louisiana landed at Southland Field-West Calcasieu Airport in Carlyss, a rural strip used mostly by crop dusters. The plane's 17 passengers were bussed to Lake Charles and the pilots "de-certified." In another incident sure to make Continental proud, one of its Boeing 757s landed on a taxiway at Newark Liberty International Airport in 2006. That's really, really bad because taxiways are where the planes approach the gate. The National Transportation Safety Board later found that lightening was at least partially to blame for the mishap.
Private pilots screw up, too. Last year, Barak Obama's campaign plane made a picture-perfect landing in Des Moines, Iowa - when it should have landed in Cedar Rapids. "We just seemed to overshoot the runway by about 150 miles," the future president told the crowd once he finally arrived.
And earlier this month, a Turkish Airlines jet bound for Tiblisi, Georgia (the country, not the state) landed at a military base 10 miles from the civilian airport. When asked what happened, an airline spokesman would only say "it could be that the pilot confused the airports."
No kidding.
Photo: Flickr/sylvia@intrigue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhm5cG_MZyI
