Id like to take this opportunity to thank the controller at KSAN for stopping me from landing at a military airbase that one time. You're my hero.

In 1965, I was a student pilot at a FBO at El Monte Airport, about 12 miles east of Los Angeles. At that time, the favorite destination for our first solo cross country flights was Orange County Airport, many miles to the south. These days, it's called John Wayne Airport, but back then it was just Orange County. The famous Talmantz Aviation museum was there, and it was fun to fly down, tour the museum, and then fly back. We did that more than once. The navigation wasn't hard, but one of the students, a girl, could fly OK, but couldn't navigate worth a darn. Her first solo cross country flight down to Orange County didn't go well. When she got there, she called the tower and asked for permission to land. They didn't see her. Rock your wings, they said. She did. They still didn't see her but, since nobody else was around, they said OK, just land. At that time, one of my instructors was flying a Cessna 150 high up over Mount Wilson, so he could hear this conversation. He tried to get through to her, but his signal didn't reach that far. Anyway, she put her Cessna 150 down, and the last thing anyone heard was, "Oh, my God! Jeeps!" Welcome, friends and neighbors to El Toro Naval Air Station, home to US Marines, big heavy airplanes, lots and lots of aluminum overcast, and people with guns. Still, they were gentle about it. They quietly brought her into their flight office, showed her a map, and said, "you wanted to to THERE, but you are HERE," and good stuff like that. Then they made sure she was OK and had plenty of fuel, and allowed her to take off. They could have arrested her and dismantled the airplane. That was in 1965. I hate to think what they would do today.

Almost happened to me once in Florida. I was cleared Final for 04 at KVRB, but I was lining up on a 8 mile final for 10L at KFPR. It took me a few moments to realize that KVRB was to my left and I quickly changed course. The woman at the Tower was nice enough to check if I had the correct runway in sight as well. KVRB is extremely busy and I was distracted by circling for about 10 minutes while jets came in. Everyone just take your time and double check!

I had that happen. Was about 9 hours into my private license (School also did my Solo shortly after this) and was up on a ferry flight with an instructor and being this was training through commercial and instructor levels they put me in the soup with an instructor as had to take a plane over to a near by airport for some checks. So we got up in the air and she got our IFR clearance and off we went on our way to the other airport. We broke out of the clouds and shortly after bingo right on target for the end of the runway....Or so we thought! As we touched down to land we started to look around for the FBO and we were both scratching our heads as everything looked like it was being built. We taxied up to a building that had some guys around it and got out and asked and turned out the airport we landed at was a new airport in the middle of being built (Thank God the runway was complete at least!!) and they explained we were about 3-4 miles off as the one we were shooting for was a couple miles further west. Turns out we had not been notified of this new one and the chart we had while in date apparently did not yet have this one on the chart so when we broke out we just assumed it was the right airport. We all including the School director had a good laugh at it later and made sure that the school knew of this new airport for future reference HA HA

I was with my dad once, holding for an airplane on final. I noticed the plane had no gear and pointed this out to him. He keyed the radio and said, "Aircraft on final, go around, check gear down." He said "Gear down" as the plane crossed in front of us and was starting to flair. He came withing just a few feet of the runway before he started to climb again. If his gear had been down I think the wheels would have touched down! My dad and I both thought for sure he was going to belly in but he made it. Is there ever a point where it is too late to go around? I mean before you cash, of course. Obviously you can't go around with a wrecked engine and bent prop.

Ok, I agree that pilot can land on wrong RW when it is parallel to another one. But I dont't understand how to confuse the RW with a different heading 🤔😲

Controllers and pilots speak unclearly and way too fast, I can almost never hear what's being said. So it's no surprise to me that a lot of these incidents seem to be communication related.

I was stationed at Blytheville AFB in '74 when a guy landed on the base runway and found out when Security Police surrounded his airplane he was at the wrong airport. He thought he was landing at Memphis. The Wing Commander and Base Commander were pissed having to get out of bed at three in the morning. After putting him and his passenger on the ground with M-16 toting SP's and a complete search of his airplane and about two hours of sitting in getting questioned, the Wing Commander decided to just let the FAA know about it and released him.

My hats off to pilots. It takes courage to fly in the first place and most people who know nothing of aviation take that for granted.

Southampton UK. EGHI. Runway 20/02 always a little tricky to get right in your mind!!

I was with a friend on a flight when he was hauling freight and were landing in SLC and we're cleared for 17 which me being a local I know where that runway is in reference to 16L and 16R. If I didn't correct him he would've lined up for 16R. Night is one of the most difficult times to identify runways while 10 miles out.

Balls!!! You're never too low to go around. When I'm giving someone a BFR, on some landing when they are just seconds from touching down, I say, "There's an animal on the runway, go around without touching!" In an instant I know if they are flying the airplane or just going along for the ride.

Part of the problem is that aviation navigation and communication is vastly outdated. There's only minimal data connection between planes and ground stations and a lot of critical information is only communicated verbally. On top the radio system is still analog and therefor doesn't allow you to call a plane or controller directly but instead needs a pilot to dial into the right frequency and than monitor all the communication besides flying the aircraft. Guiding is also still very limited. Even if you perform a CAT III landing guidance is only provided in a straight line to the runway, because that's the way ILS works. Sure, there's also MLS, but who uses that? At least this part get's solved in the future when GBAS expands and finally get's it's CAT III rating. When you look at a different mode of transport, railways, aviation could learn a lot from that. Sure, rail traffic has it's own problems and part's were it's outdated and should improve, but communication is way better, or eat least it can be. Modern systems are based on digital radio communication that can transmit both, data and speech. It's more like mobile networks for your phones, and it's even based on the same technology. Thi allows the traffic controllers to directly send digital informations to the trains without the risk of misunderstanding. Sure, for air traffic the system had to be different, after all you can't just stopp a plane mid air, but it could digitally transmit the assigned runway and approach path to the navigational system of the plane. By using GNS and satellite communication this could apply to the whole flight minimizing the risk of collisions and improving the capacity of highly occupied sections of airspace. On top speech quality could be much better, reducing the risk of misunderstandings even further and the ability to directly call a plane would reduce the amount of information a pilot has to filter during final approach and therefor reducing stress. This would especially benefit smaller aircraft flown by only one pilot since one person has to do it all alone instead of having one or even two colleagues to share the workload. I don't think such a system will be implemented in the near future, probably not even in a distant future, but at least GBAS could drastically reduce the dependence on VFR. IT's way cheaper for airports and aircraft and one ground station can serve a whole airport. No more different approach system on different runways. The system will especially benefit airports with complex approach paths, for example due to obstacles like mountains.

I had an interesting experience at KIXD a few weeks ago. I was IFR in VMC approaching from the south, winds were calm. On check in with approach, the controller said plan runway 18. Then 10 minutes later as I was handed off to tower by a different controller, she said expect runway 36. Checking in with tower I was instructed to enter left downwind runway 18. Approaching the pattern I noticed a plane depart runway 36 so I called the tower to verify I was in the right place which they confirmed and cleared me to land on runway 18. Clearing runway 18 the tower controller asked which runway approach said to expect so I told him the story and he understood the confusion. I always load an approach if one is available and time permits or else set my GPS to OBS mode and OBS to runway heading which worked good in this situation. I just had to keep spinning the OBS each time I got a new runway assignment :-)

I've seen another GA flying video: There's an airport in Florida (Orlando, I think) where there is a freeway very near the runway. Tower usually has to help night-flying pilots avoid the freeway and land on the correct runway! The freeway is far wider than the runway, too!

A very recent and well reported runway error happened at San Francisco Intl. back in July late at night. Air Canada 759 lined up on the parallel taxiway to 28R. Taxiway C was occupied by at least four airliners waiting in sequence to depart. The crew of the Air Canada Airbus made a go around with literally just seconds to spare and avoided crashing into the line of waiting jets.

Here in Tampa, I remember a Delta flight landing at McDill AFB. That's hard because TPA has two parallel runways at 360 deg, while McDill has one runway at 40 degrees. A few years ago a C-17 returning from Afghanistan landed at Peter O Knight field on the 3500' runway mostly used by Cessna's. I had to go watch it take off, it was a day long project including divers in the water and blocking off some roads. When they finally left, they lifted off with 200' to spare! No problem! That's understandable. I'm sure the crew was tired and the runways are both in a line, just 4 miles apart.

I feel that at some point ATC directing aircraft at some point needs to shift from simple radio speech communication to data communication

You can't be "too" low to go around!! My instructor said at any point you can go around, even in you have already touched down.

There is a Hollywood actor who lands on taxiway's.

Hey! My training airport! (KCCR)

Usually if there are no parallel runways, I tell the GPS to go direct to the airport that I'm landing at and then dial the OBS to essentially make me a nice purple highway down to the runway. If there are parallel runways, I push the OBS a few degrees to the right or to the left to visually remind me of what runway I'm supposed to be approaching.

About 15 years ago, a plane was carrying the Arkansas Razorback basketball team back to Fayetteville, AR. and landed at the Springdale, AR. municipal airport and ended up running off the end of the runway and got stuck.

I departed on the wrong runway at KGGG with expedited take off instructions and unfamiliar with airport. Easier to do than you'd think.

I sometimes have to do mental arithmetic just work out a runway reciprocal, if I don't have a compass rose in front of me.

0:20 You can see them coming a mile away. Enough said! LOL

Civvy question: "He felt he was too low to go around" - is that an actual thing? I thought that go around was essentially always available - well of course unless fuel exhausted, control impaired, etc.; but ... "too low" ?! (The only thing I can imagine is being pitch down, such that throttling up would just increase the ground impact? Even then, wouldn't that be one hell of a down pitch to feel that way about it? And one that couldn't be flared out of? Another thought, might he be already at or in stall, so that pitch up is not [immediately] available? Thus he couldn't throttle up, and couldn't pitch up, until touched down.) And would there be any benefit to a touch and go if you realized this at the top of the runway? Would that be the correct procedure?

A few years ago a light aircraft landed on a long road going through Leominster’s (UK) industrial estate. It hit road bumps and ended in the top most branches of a small near-by tree where it hung suspended for a few days before being removed. The local airport at Shobdon was some five or six miles away. I don’t know what happened to the pilot - I hope they were ok - but it all looked a bit comical while it lasted.

What does circle west prior to the numbers mean? Aren't you just sidestepping?

This is why I love flying from ILS to ILS and the very odd RNAV

Congratulations! You're making excellent videos! So... How do a ILS Approach really works? And what about the RNAV system? How do it get the high accuracy to do a precise approach?

It's easy. Say you've just flown 12-18 hours and you're tired, perhaps returning from a 90-day TDY, happy to get home to Mama. We did just that a couple of times in Savannah in the 1950.s.

I would love to see more videos from you guys at Boldmethod. Very entertaining and informative!

Always tune in an instrument approach, even during a visual. Great technique to use

Two videos in a week? Is this Christmas?

On my first solo cross country to Palm Springs (KPSP), I used Bing Maps for an aerial view of the runways because it's common to confuse the taxi way for the runway. Then on my commercial three point 300nm back from Grand Canyon to my home airport of Montgomery, I lined up for Miramar because I was super tired. The controller asked me when I was turning base and saved my ass.

How are you too LOW to go around?!

im not a pilot but these videos make me think i could fly lol i do enjoy your videos but dont see how you keep so calm any more video of the big jets ???

I am an ex-airline and executive pilot. Landing on the wrong runway as an airline pilot is failed CRM in the cockpit, period. Landing in wrong runway in GA is also being distracted. With today's tech, still landing on wrong runways means a complete lack of attention by the pilots. The question however is how did it get to that? Fatigue ? Crap and bad work environment? If one wants to get to the real cause of the problem, you could find out the actual problems but again, always easiest and cheapest to blame the pilots because sure, the mistake was theirs, but that is just the top of the pyramid, the lower levels will never be addressed. That much for today's flight safety.

Awesome!! Keep ‘em coming!

Anyone else notice Swayne Martin?

When i was doing my ppl. My instructor tought me how use the the ILS ans RNAV because it'll reduce the risk of approaching a wrong runway . By the time i went to have my IR i only took 8 hours on instructions time to understand IR the rest it was having fun around .

Anytime I get "that feeling I go around; another reason I pefere to overly A/P before entering the pattern. I got the wrong runway for t/off at SFO one time because of hurried event.so not sure,stop n look to be sure...

yea i would never reload an approach for a simple side step to a parallel. but if i got discontinued for the approach and reset, or went missed for whatever reason and sent published missed instead of vectors back to final, then i would for SA. that close to threshold, eyes should stay outside with quick inst scan.

'too low' for go around?!? I'm just confused at that statement. Unless he was already on the ground or something had happened to his engine...

It is disturbingly easy, on my third solo flight I was approaching the airport I have been to like 5 times before but I always approached it from the opposite direction, this time, I was approaching it from the opposite direction and well somehow I focused on bunch of other things and when I could not see the traffic on final it got me worried and luckily I have realized I am in the wrong location in time and I pay close attention to which runway I am landing on, but I can definitely understand that some pilot just relies on old habits in new situation and completely misses the fact he is aligned for the wrong runway.

Please watch the video ad a write a summary about how you could accidentally land on the wrong runway. Question can be used as guidance. Possible answers, answer may vary. • Where did the incident take place? • What was the confusion? • What happened between pilot and ATC? • How does instrument help for landing? • What is the suggestion? Please help me 🙏

What about the Delta pilot that landed on the wrong runway, at the wrong airport?

How can this "may not have heard" (and such) even be possible if the proper protocol with "roger that" (and suich) are used? In other contexts, I'm amazed not proper noise filters aren't applied. (I have seen other videos where the talk is drenched in white noise.) Seems like there are still a lot of fairly basic things that can be fixed and enforced more rigorously in the airline industry.

Compass heading would have indicated which runway you are lined up on.

Two questions; 1) Are you *ever* "too low to go around"? (I'm thinking touch-and-go), and 2) "Prior to the numbers circle West". Did that mean you should turn right (onto kind of a left base) and then turn a further 270 deg right before landing on 1-7 right?

I'm not even a pilot, why am I watching this?

"You can always go around"

The wrong runway is understandable, but how about landing on the taxi ways like Harrison Ford did? I see that statistic pop up from time to time and it's not just GA pilots, but commercial jet pilots do as well. What's going on there?

I didn't realize KCOS (team pete field) allowed personal aircraft? As we dont have an aero club

There are a couple of red flags on the story of the pilot who landed on the wrong runway at Buchanan Field. First, he failed to communicate properly, missing not one but two important communications from the tower, which necessitated the controller rerouting another aircraft to avoid a potential collision. Second, when told to go around, he refused, claiming he was “too low to go around”, which in any functional aircraft is never true, thus putting himself and the vehicles on the ground and the second aircraft at risk. Would he have done the same thing if the runway had been closed due to construction, and possibly crashed his plane or killed construction workers? I must mention, even as others have before me, that go arounds are practiced at all phases of landing. I have had a bounced landing where I had to go around and try it again. The rule is, when in doubt, go around! There is no such thing as too low to go around!

If planes have transponders why doesn't the control tower automatically link an aircraft's transponder to a runway ILS data stream via computer automation? It would be as easy as adding another Indicator light to the runway approach lights. Three Green you're on the right runway, 3 red go around.

I had a close call once, cleared to take off I was almost at v1 when an aircraft with a faulty radio came in to land on the incorrect cross runway, ignoring the no radio guidance, windsock and the wind T - it was too close for comfort

How did you get that sweet overlay of flightdata on the video?

How low are you when you begin your circling maneuver? Does that mean over the threshold?

Why so high on appr on the indicator?

I've never been "too low" to go around (when not having wheels on the ground) any thoughts?

When I was Multi Engine Pilot Training in the 80's we had a Pilot land on a disused airfield at Beaulieu Hampshire by mistake ! Luckily he missed all the potholes and his Licence suspended for 6 months subject to a satisfactory Navigation GFT !

Why can't they just color-code the runways with lights? "You're landing on green" or red or blue or whatever. It would be perfect for landing 2 to even 5 airplanes at the same time. Idk... I just think this kind of error can be handled much better by simple technology. Isn't it mind blowing that we now have self driving cars but not something as simple as color-coded runways?

Great video, awesome tips! Does anyone know what is being used to overlay the instruments (airspeed, altitude, VSI, and heading indicators) on the video.

What I do not get is the thought of pilot being to low for a go around. I always thought that you would rather do a touch and go than rolling on the wrong runway not knowing if you cross another planes path. I am no pilot though, only someone who occasionally plays Flight Simulator, could any pilot explain that? Also, should a pilot not memorize the runway heading he is supposed to land beside putting it into the heading indicator as said?

First, thanks for the valuable and fascinating video. Now tell me there's not a serious, serious issue when planes are not hearing the control tower. If it's crosstalk, or any other reason you can name, now tell me that's not something that is actively being eliminated through digital solutions.

Is that an actual digital HUD or has that been superimposed?

No matter how you slice it, this is inexcusable every time. Same thing goes for landing on a taxiway. The more "TAA" GA airplanes get, the more pilot skills go out the window.

Very nice video.

Yay! My home field!

How did Tower not see him when on the chart 1L is right in front of Tower.

I’ve literally watched someone land a turbo commander on an active taxiway, I’m sure it happens a lot.

how can you be to low to go around?

Happened to me on my first night flight with my instructor, lined up for 36 instead of 31 but then tower cleared us to land on 36 instead 😅

i was landing at Blackpool and told to position behind a private jet which had been cleared to land....I told the Tower i didn't have visual....Then we heard "Oh Gosh Blackpool iv'e made a dreadful mistake" as he was surrounded by Military Verhicles at Warton Airfield.....Oh How We Laarfed .................

No, I land in fields or on beaches.

I'm not a pilot! Why am I watching this?

How did he filmed the intro bit that resembles MFD on a G1000? As in the first 6 ish seconds??

Hey, mistakes happen. How do you think the kids got here?

Curious what, exactly, "Before the numbers" means

How do you know which runway is which

What would happen if you land on a TAXIWAY?

This guy looks like a younger BUZZ ALDRIN

My hometown airport. Best training airport

Hi, the pilot should never feel confused, if you confused go around!

Happens when you let the airplane fly ahead of you.

Legit vid. Subbed

That’s reassuring ‘

Video Production related question: How do you get such stable footage? Is the camera mounted on a gible, is the aircraft that free from vibration, or is it done in post with stabilisation effects? Thanks,

How can you land on a taxiway instead of a runway? Ask Harrison Ford!

709 ride. Might as well declare an emergency. But his radios are useless anyway.

Wow. The closed captioning on this is bad :D Auto CC really doesn't like flight videos.

Hey CCR is my airport! Sounds like PSA XDD

Why am I watching this when I don't fly?

i dont even have a pilots license why am i watching this

Heyy! KSLC

You picked the wrong "tarmac" fool!

Then there is landing at the wrong airport.....

Do like Harrison Ford and land on the taxiway!