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Time ? a nonprofit organization that works to preserve early Southwest culture - will be at the Fort, The cruise's season starts Tuesday and ends Nov.) There is, After the 9/11 attacks, This was hardly the first time that a large commercial airliner or cargo plane has landed at the wrong airport. modified as a double-decker plane to increase its cargo capacity mistakenly landed at a small airport instead of its destination nine miles away McConnell Air Force Base A decade ago a Northwest Airlines passenger plan mistakenly landed at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota instead of the civilian airport it was supposed to have aimed for A cargo plane heading for a military air base in Florida last year mistakenly landed at a civilian airportIt's way too early to speculate on what happened in Branson but it's important to note that the runway where the Southwest airliner landed at M Graham Clark Downtown Airport has the runway compass heading of 120/300 (12/30 if you look at the numbers painted on the runway) The runway compass heading at the correct Branson airport seven miles away is 140/320 A 20-degree difference might seem like a lot but it's not when a plane is descending in near-darkness and the pilot is lining up for landing according to what his flight plan tells him is the runway's alignment The visual lineup probably fit with what he knew about the Branson airportThe same compass alignment problem was cited at the main culprit behind the mistaken 747 cargo plane landing in Kansas in November If you look on a map of those two runways the alignment varies by only a couple of degrees Given the heavy weight of the plane in that case it's amazing the pilot landed without damage or injuriesIn the Southwest case did the pilot go through most of the flight on autopilot Probably And it's entirely possible that automated flying played a big role in the mistaken approach to the smaller airport If the autopilot was engaged and the pilot disengaged it for his final approach he might have seen a runway that looked like the right one and simply pressed ahead with his manual landing procedure Why he didn't abort the landing when he realized his mistake isn't clear Maybe he calculated that it was safer to land and brake hard than to gun the engines and get out of thereThere's no substitute for total pilot and co-pilot vigilance at all times during the flight I have no doubt that increased automation has caused lots of pilots to relax a bit at the controls We don't know what happened in the Southwest case The FAA investigators will get to the bottom of it no doubt What's important is that the pilots brought the plane down safely with no injuries and no apparent damage to the aircraftHow do these things happen? Attorney Offices in the Eastern District and the Northern District. Yusufi spoke both? Dallas VideoFest.