Delta pilots thought AF base was airport

Report: pilots lack experience landing at Rapid City field.

A Delta Air Lines flight’s mistaken landing at an Air Force base in South Dakota last summer was due to errors by pilots who had little experience flying into the intended airport, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded.

Delta Flight 2485 took off from Minneapolis/St. Paul and landed at Ellsworth Air Force Base with 123 passengers. The Airbus A320 was supposed to land at Rapid City Regional Airport, which is several miles away.

The NTSB report, completed late last month, said the plane was at a higher altitude than normal for landing when the captain saw an airport and started the process to lower the landing gear.

“During interviews, the crew stated they misheard the controller’s warning” about the nearby Air Force base, the report said.

The first officer “said to the captain ‘you got the right one in sight?’ The captain replied ‘I hope I do,’” according to the report.

Both pilots were veterans but Delta’s records show the captain had flown into Rapid City only once, in 2014, while the first officer had never flown into Rapid City.

The pilots did not verify their position before beginning the landing approach, and they switched off the autopilot and other systems that could have alerted them to the situation, the NTSB report said.

Focused on the wrong runway, the captain “increased the descent rate ... resulting in an unstable approach,” the NTSB report said. “The crew realized their mistake just prior to touchdown, but considered it was safer to complete the landing at that point.” There were no injuries and no damage to the plane. After the landing, the flight continued on to the Rapid City airport. Delta offered passengers “a gesture of apology for the inconvenience.” About 600 wrong airport landings or near landings have been reported over the past 20 years, according to the NTSB report. Of those, six were Rapid Citybound flights that landed or nearly landed at Ellsworth. Of those, two were airline flights and four were general aviation flights.