Passenger plane lands at the wrong airport after pilots ignore their cockpit equipment

By Hazel Plush, travel writer 

12 OCTOBER 2016 • 12:56PM

The pilots of an Indonesian passenger plane landed at the wrong airport, ignoring their cockpit systems which they thought were faulty – only to find that their own navigational skills were wrong.

The captain and first officer of the Sriwijaya Air flight thought that they had spotted their destination airport from the air, so disregarded the information provided by the cockpit equipment, and landed at the airfield – but quickly realised that it was the wrong airport.

Flight SJ-21 had departed from the city of Medan, on the east coast of North Sumatra, and was scheduled to arrive in Minangkabau International Airport in Padang in Western Sumatra. However, the plane’s 96 passengers were forced to disembark at Tabing Airport, a military airfield which hadn’t been used by commercial aircraft since 2005.

The incident occurred in 2012, but the final National Transportation Safety Committee report has only just been published this week.

According to the report, the pilots called up Minangkabau International air traffic control to request a landing on runway 33. The control tower gave the go-ahead, and the pilots reported that they had the runway in their sights and would make a visual approach. On landing, they called the tower to confirm that they had arrived – but Minangkabau’s controllers saw that no plane had landed on runway 33.

The pilots called the tower to confirm that they had arrived – but the air traffic controllers saw that no plane had landed

The pilot [then] reported to Minang tower that they had landed at Tabing Airfield,” the report states. “Referred to the information provided by the pilot, the Minang Tower verified and realized that there was no aircraft on runway 33. The Minang Tower then coordinated with the Tabing Airfield authority and the district manager of the aircraft operator.”

But this wasn’t the first time Tabing Airport had been mistaken for Minangkabau International Airport. The two airports are just eight miles apart, and the official airport information “plate” – a map and chart with landing and departure instructions, which every pilot must carry – warns that Tabing “can be mistaken for Minangkabau.” However, the pilots maintain that the instruction on their plate “was not clearly readable”.

Neither of the pilots had flown to Minangkabau before, and the report stated that the unclear information given by the landing chart may also have reduced “the pilot awareness to the adjacent airport with similar runway direction and dimension”.

Since the incident the aircraft operator has issued six safety actions and the airport operator has issued two measures to improve safety. In addition, the National Transportation Safety Committee has issued the aircraft operator, air navigation provider and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation with air safety recommendations.

Telegraph Travel has contacted Sriwijaya Air for additional comments on the incident.