US
airforce plane lands at the wrong airfield
See
the unexpected landing and then what followed.
A contribution for V8 Idle Moments from Peter Beadle.
Photos: Fox 13 News Alert
Video clip: courtesy
Ryan Cucwa
Updated: 140131
Posted: 140130
 |
 | US
airforce plane lands at the wrong airfield
An unexpected arrival at
Peter O'Night, a small local municipal airstrip, was a large US airforce C-17.
Fortunately the plane landed safely and nobody was hurt. The airfield at Peter
O'Night has no control tower and is technically what is called an "uncontrolled
airstrip". It seems the pilot made a mistake as he was due to land at MacDill
Air Force Base to the south west.
MacDill AFB is an active United
States Air Force base located approximately 6.4 km (4 miles) south-southwest of
downtown Tampa in Florida USA. The runway length is 11,421ft.
See the
C-17 landing - by chance it was filmed by an airline pilot on his day off enjoying
his hobby of flying light aircraft at the Peter O'Night airfield on Davis Island.
More
How
did they get the C-17 out of the short airstrip?
See what happened! The
length of the runway at Peter O'Night was reported by Fox News as around 3,500ft
and too tight for the C-17 to get out again. So how would they get it out - would
they need to take it apart or strip it out of all surplus weight and try and take
off again? More
|
| 
To
this day the gas holder just west of Southall station near Northolt still has
a very large LHR painted on it with a large arrow underneath pointing towards
the main runways at London Heathrow -
a hi-tech solution! More | PanAm
Boeing 707 lands at Northolt by mistake
Peter Beadle spoke with his brother,
a former BA747 airline pilot, who mentioned a similar incident at Northolt (an
RAF airfield just north of London Heathrow airport) when, at the age of 15 at
the time, he was visiting a family friend at LHR shortly after the Boeing 707
had landed at Northolt in October 1960. The friend was then “Public Relations
Officer” for London Airport (Heathrow), and "I remember him saying that
PanAm said to the Captain of the Boeing 707 that “You got it in, you get
it out!”!
"Well he did so after all the internal fittings and
95% of the fuel had been off loaded. The pilot then had to fly it for 65 miles
to cover the 5 miles between Northolt and LHR where he landed safely. The 707
was then grounded for a week for a refit and safety checks. By the way, the Pilot
went back to the US as passenger and we understand he never flew for PanAm again." |  | Huge
high-tech Boeing airliner lands at wrong airport
Peter Beadle spotted this
item from a report in November 2013 when a Boeing Dreamlifter aircraft arrived
at Colonel James Jabara Airport, in Kansas when it should have landed at McConnell
Air Force Base in Wichita, nine miles away. Considering that Jabara, which doesn’t
even have a control tower, is some 3,000 feet short of the ideal landing strip
length of the Dreamlifter, then the feat seems all the more impressive. An incredible
feat of engineering, this large aircraft relies on a runway of 9,000 feet (2,700
metres) to take off when it’s fully loaded. The tiny Jabara airport boasts
a strip of tarmac that’s just 6,101 feet (1,860 metres) long. Boeing officials
and the pilots worked closely with Wichita Airport Authority to calculate if getting
the aircraft off the ground again in such limited surroundings would be possible.
They did so in the following 24 hours. More |
|
