BA flight lands in Edinburgh instead of Dusseldorf by mistake
Doesn’t really matter which bit of foreign you’re going to does it? It’s all, after all, foreign.
The actual cause seems to be someone had the wrong flight plan….
BA flight lands in Edinburgh instead of Dusseldorf by mistake
Doesn’t really matter which bit of foreign you’re going to does it? It’s all, after all, foreign.
The actual cause seems to be someone had the wrong flight plan….
Having done an inordinate amount of flights on BA I find this bizarre. To start with the pilot would announce the destination as part of the greeting. If he’d said the wrong destination we’d have been up in arms.
If the pilot announced the right destination but the plane decided it was going somewhere else you’d expect the flight crew to notice something was wrong, it’s not like they’re in the same direction.
If I was still travelling I’d be a tad more worried.
The BA staff followed the instructions supplied by WDL – except that someone at WDL had failed to supply instructions so the aircraft followed the previous day’s instructions.
Put not your faith in computers!
The Psalmist said “princes” three millennia ago but flight crew seem to view avionics as princes
Should count themselves lucky it wasn’t Glasgow.
Pity it wasn’t a Lancaster, armed with a Tallboy, targetted on Wee Jimmie Krankie’s Arse in the Scottish Parliament.
Perhaps WDL being German thought it was a giggle – oh, hang on, Krauts have no sense of humour. It must have been the famous Teutonic Efficiency.
So, the autopilot flew them to Edinburgh? And it took them (how long?) two hours to notice? Didn’t anybody in the cockpit look at the compass? Or even just out of a window? Eee, the sun’s in an odd place today.
I think it’s almost certain the flight crew had instructions to fly to EDI, and the flight plan had been filed accordingly (but the cabin crew thought they were going to DUS). Absent this, any error would have soon been spotted.
I’m a bit surprised that no regulars on the route queried the non-appearance of sea after 30 minutes or so, I think I would have.
@jgh
@Chris
Yep, sun and where’s Channel?
At 35, 000′ pilots can see a long way:
“Why is there always sea to starboard and land to port?”
Should have flown Yorkshire Airways….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPjJFv1NDBg
Don’t blame them. The newly built DUS is a nightmare. The temporary one that replaced the airport that burnt down was great.
How to make things worse by improving them.
Things I can think of, as a seasoned flyer but never a pilot, that must have all happened.
1) Flight crew must have known they were going to EDI. You don’t accidently fly there. They must have been told that was their destination.
2) Flight crew didn’t notice the destination on the board as they boarded or had just flown in from elsewhere and had sat in the cockpit.
3) Flight crew didn’t announce the destination before take off.
3) The flight code must have changed or been a new crew flying on that code that weren’t aware where it is meant to go.
4) Heavy cloud so no one would notice from the window that they are going the wrong way.
5) Cabin crew must have known the plane was meant to go to DUS (they check the tickets afterall) and not communicated this even once to the flight crew.
There’s probably a load more things that have to go wrong that I’m unaware of too. It has to be one of those millions to one chances where so many fuck-ups have to align.
Also I can’t count!
They’d have been above cloud, so not noticing the Sun was ~90 degrees out of place was imo a sackable dereliction of duty.
Trial run for Brexit when flights from the UK won’t be able to land in the EU. So to Edinburgh and then by bus.