Tag Archives: peter o knight

C-17 Landing at Wrong Airport Blamed on Fatigue

Update: The Stars and Stripes reports on the corrective actions put in place to prevent future aircraft from misidentifying the runways.

The Tampa Tribune obtained the report of last July’s “unscheduled landing” of a C-17 at Peter O. Knight airport in Florida — when it was supposed to land at MacDill Air Force Base a few miles away.

The crew of a military cargo jet landed at the wrong airport in Tampa in July, in part, because of fatigue, complacency and a lack of flight discipline, an Air Force investigation has found.

Fortunately, the crew realized their error and were able to Read more

C-17 Makes Unscheduled Landing at Wrong Airport

Single seat fighter pilots are individually responsible for every action they take with their aircraft.  They have no co-pilot, so everyone — even the youngest Lieutenant fighter pilot — is qualified to make the calls necessary to safely fly their aircraft.

For that reason, fighter pilots sometimes joke that heavy aircraft are “flown by committee,” since every action is a “team” effort among pilot, co-pilot, navigator, flight engineer, loadmaster, flight attendant, etc.  Still, oftentimes passengers’ lives are at stake and valuable cargo is on board, so perhaps redundancy is called for.

On that note, it seems a certain C-17 team made a poor decision:

A huge military plane from New Jersey may have mistaken the tiny runway at Peter O’ Knight airport for the runway at MacDill Air Force Base…

While the aircraft was from McGuire, some news reports indicated the mission Read more