quote: BBC Online

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A passenger jet which was destined for City of Derry Airport has landed at an Army base six miles away by mistake.The Liverpool to Londonderry service, operated by Eirjet on behalf of Ryanair, landed at Ballykelly airstrip at 1440 BST.

Ryanair said in a statement it was due to an "error by the Eirjet pilot who mistakenly believed he was on a visual approach to City of Derry airport".

The 39 passengers were taken by coach from Ballykelly to the airport.

One of the passengers said everyone was completely surprised when they realised what had happened. He said: "The pilot apologised and said, 'We may have arrived at the wrong airport'.

"Everyone started laughing and thought it was a joke, then I saw for myself when I looked out and saw Army officers everywhere. It was just unbelievable, I think the Army officers were shocked themselves (as) they were taking photographs. It was surreal."

Another passenger said they had to wait on the plane while stairs were brought from the airport. "Unfortunately they didn't let us go down the slide," he added.

In its statement, Ryanair said it had notified the civil aviation authorities in the UK and Ireland of the incident. "We have also asked Eirjet, the operator of the aircraft to carry out a full investigation into this matter, as in over seven years of Ryanair flights into City of Derry airport, and over 20 years of Ryanair-operated flights, such a mistake has never occurred before," it added.

The aircraft is estimated to be a 200-seater jet. The scheduled return flight to Liverpool was cancelled. The airstrip at Ballykelly is primarily used by Army helicopters and light aircraft. It was built for huge military planes, making it one of the longest on the island. It is not yet clear how the plane will be removed from the Army base. In a statement, Eirjet said it would carry out a full investigation.

"Eirjet wish to stress that passenger safety was not compromised and the incident involved the aircraft landing at a runway which is exactly in line with the main runway at City of Derry Airport," it said.

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Ballykelly - sounds more like Buggleskelly to me!
 

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Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 03-29-2006, 04:10 PM:
 
Reminds me of NWA's accidental landing at the Air Force base near Rapid City, SD about a year ago...
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 03-29-2006, 04:41 PM:
 
Poo poo occurs...
 

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Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 03-29-2006, 08:28 PM:
 
Happened here in the '60's. A 707 landed at the small Ohio State University airport instead of Port Columbus. VERY embarrassing, and an immediate dismissal of the pilot. They stripped the plane and had the head pilot from the airling come in and blast that thing off the short runway.

Wrong Way Landings by Commercial Planes

[ 03-29-2006, 08:48 PM: Message edited by: Adam Martin ]
 

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Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 03-30-2006, 06:49 PM:
 
This actually happened to me back in the late 1980's. A classmate of mine owned a small aircraft, and we flew from Tucson to Phoenix Sky Harbor for a plant tour of what was then Garrett Air-Research Jet Engine Facility.

Now, this incident occured shortly after the great Ronald Reagan fired all the Air Traffic Controllers.

On our flight back from Phoenix to Tucson the Tucson ATC put us on a temporary course to make way for some priority aircraft. Anyhow, my classmate who was both the aircraft owner and pilot was a very patient person. After about 45 minutes on this temp course he finally radioed in to Tucson. Turns out that the Tucson ATCs forgot about us!

K
 

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Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 03-31-2006, 01:46 AM:
 
Actually, landing on the wrong runway/airport happens often. One time Jenna Jameson and I were flying back from Las Vegas to LAX after the Adult Film Awards at CES and the dumbass pilot was to land on LAX 24R, but landed on 25L. Gosh! I was sooo scared! Not from the landing but from Jenna...
 

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 03-31-2006, 01:35 PM:
 
Will, are all of those graemlins meant to be a subtle political comment?
 

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