{"id":300,"date":"2013-12-02T08:28:10","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T13:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/?p=300"},"modified":"2013-12-02T08:32:03","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T13:32:03","slug":"a-career-limiting-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/?p=300","title":{"rendered":"A Career-Limiting Move"},"content":{"rendered":"

A beautiful, clear day. An experienced, competent crew. A modern, state-of-the-art perfectly functioning airplane. It would be pretty tough to not feel serene, confident and competent under the circumstances. So how could the crew of Atlas Air 4241, a Boeing 747, manage to land at Jabara Airport instead of McConnell Air Force Base<\/a>, eight miles to the south?<\/p>\n

Well, its really not that tough<\/i> to do, actually. Even in this age of GPS receivers so accurate that even an inexpensive one can place itself on the proper side of the line down the middle of the runway.<\/p>\n

I think a contributing factor was the clear weather. In on a crappy, hazy day, a crew will most likely use their instruments to find the airport. On a day with actual instrument weather, a crew will necessarily use their instruments to find the airport. But on a beautiful, clear day, a crew might well look out the window, see the airport, and land.<\/p>\n

Here’s McConnell:<\/p>\n

\"mcconnell\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And here’s Jabara:<\/p>\n

\"jabara\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, they look different. But do the really look that<\/i> different?<\/p>\n

I think I could<\/span> have made that mistake. I’d like to believe that I wouldn’t<\/span> have made it, at least with an equally experienced pilot in the other seat.<\/p>\n

There’s a program sponsored by NASA<\/a> that attempts to capture data from incidents where pilots <ahem> fouled up, but didn’t do any damage or cause any danger. Reports are voluntary, and if there was no criminal intent, the report can work as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Probably this works better when your incident doesn’t become national news.<\/p>\n

The point of the NASA program is that, with it, all pilots can learn from the mistakes of the few. That’s a good thing.<\/p>\n

Lesson learned for me: Check the GPS even when I’m sure<\/i> I see the airport in front of me. After all, who am I going to believe; the GPS or my own lyin’ eyes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A beautiful, clear day. An experienced, competent crew. A modern, state-of-the-art perfectly functioning airplane. It would be pretty tough to not feel serene, confident and competent under the circumstances. So how could the crew of Atlas Air 4241, a Boeing 747, manage to land at Jabara Airport instead of McConnell Air Force Base, eight miles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryallenonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}