On Tuesday August 7, 2012 a regional commuter operated by Silver Airways landed at the wrong airport. United Express 4049 was supposed to commute from Morgantown to Clarksburg but instead landed at Fairmont Municiple airpot ten miles away. The plane was carrying 11 passengers and 3 crew members. The crew was suspended pending the investigation. The route was new to the airline.
The hazards of making such a mistake are; the possibility of the airport not being able to handle that kind of equipment, traffic congestion and possible collision.
I do not feel there is just one reason for this mistake. I could be poor crew resource management, no sterile cockpit, overworked crew, confusing or common layouts of nearby airports or distraction, to name a few.
I do feel the media is always seeking for newsworthy stories. I feel like a lot of things are brought out by media attention and sensationalized. This type of incident is correctable. No people were harmed, just a minor inconvenience. That is great for now, but I am sure if another incident happened where there were fatalities, the media would be grateful they had a story to use as a background.
As a management professional I would say the decision for southwest to suspend its employees was proper. You can not keep someone on staff and defend them until you have enough time and information to protect your company and the individuals involved. It does not hurt anyone to make actions to satisfy the public cry for someone to pay for immediate actions and to give you and your company time to sort things out. I am sure we are all grateful this was not a fatal situation.
I agree there is no way to narrow the cause of this type of incident down to just one reason. I've noticed that so far in the other blogs I've read no one mentions any fault for ATC. Am I wrong in thinking if they were paying more attention to radar and communications some of these incidents could have been avoided and they are partially at fault too?
ReplyDeleteI agree with your thought on there not being just one causal factor to these types of incidents. I think we would both agree that there are several factors that play significant roles leading up to an aircraft landing on the runway, these factors could be related to the pilots, management, airport staff, and/or ATC. Do you think the media is just in portraying these flights as a "major incident" and dramatizing them? I think all of us are grateful that many of these incidents are not fatal.
ReplyDeleteI agree the media does try to seek newsworthy stories and always paint the topic in a bad light. There was no major damage or harm done to the airport or passengers.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, I agree with you all about the media dramatizing these events. However, as I read this, I had another thought...there is a chance that other airlines have instituted internal procedures in an attempt to keep their own aircraft from making Southwest's mistake in the future. Does this make it a good thing that the media "dramatized" the incident...i.e., could the media's reporting actually bring attention and effort to trying not to make the mistake in the future?
ReplyDeleteYou are completely right about the news trying to turn one thing into something its not. It seems to be pilot error most of the time, but people do not know what goes on behind closed doors, poor management, fatigue pilots etc. What is most interesting is most of the wrong landings by aircraft are at roughly always about 10 miles apart. So looking at that a little more could maybe define a better reasoning behind what goes on in the cockpit of the arrival portion of the flight.
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