How this Southwest Flight Landed at the Wrong airport

January 12, 2014 — Boeing 737-700 N272WN — M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport, Missouri

The runway the Southwest crew expected was more than twice as long as the runway they actually used. Flight 4013 was cleared to land at Branson Airport, but the Boeing 737-700 instead landed at M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport several miles away. The aircraft stopped on the short runway without injury, but the event prompted an NTSB investigation into how a scheduled passenger jet could visually identify the wrong airport.

The investigation found a runway-identification failure

Southwest 4013 was cleared for Runway 14 at Branson Airport but landed on Runway 12 at M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport, about six miles away. The intended runway was 7,140 feet long, while the runway used by the Boeing 737-700 was 3,738 feet. All 131 people aboard were uninjured and the airplane was not damaged.

The NTSB investigation used the cockpit voice recorder and flight-data recorder to reconstruct the approach. The crew had reported the airport in sight before receiving the landing clearance. The two airports were close together and their runways were similarly oriented, which created the visual conditions for the misidentification.

The independent reconstruction of the investigation found that required flight-crew procedures for the visual approach were not followed. It also identified ATC procedures for approving visual approaches when airports were in close proximity as a factor that could make pilot error more likely.

The runway difference made the event more serious than a simple navigation mistake. The aircraft was a transport-category jet with 131 people aboard, and the runway on which it actually landed was intended for much smaller aircraft.

The runway geometry is important to understanding why the landing became dangerous. M. Graham Clark's runway was roughly half the length of the intended Branson runway, and the aircraft stopped only a short distance from the runway end after heavy braking. The investigation also found that the visual approach procedures were not followed as required. Because the two airports were geographically close and their runways had similar orientations, the visual approach environment allowed the crew's initial identification error to persist until touchdown.

The flight-data and cockpit recordings also matter because they let investigators separate the visual identification error from the landing performance. The aircraft was operating normally and there was no mechanical emergency forcing the crew to land at the smaller airport. The safety problem developed from where the crew believed it was and the procedures used to verify that belief.

The NTSB evidence also makes clear that the landing was completed in night visual meteorological conditions. The aircraft was not forced onto the shorter runway by weather, an engine problem or a loss of navigation capability. The core problem was the identification of the airport during a visual approach.

“On January 12, 2014, about 1810 local time, Southwest Airlines flight 4013, a Boeing 737-7H4, registration N272WN, mistakenly landed at M.”

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