Hey everyone, I hope all of you are staying home all of
you are safe .
So it starts when a 747 belonging to Saudi Arabian Airlines was approaching Chennai on a very nice and calm evening of 1997 the weather was absolutely fine everything was perfect for the approach so the pilots requested for a visual approach and when They were granted a visual approach permission instead of seeing the Chennai Airport they ended up seeing Tambaram air field.
Now Tambaram is an Air Force airfield which is pretty close to Chennai and the runways of Chennai and thargrim are pretty much identical in the sense they both faced in the same direction the 747 pilots instead of seeing Chennai runway ended up seeing Tambaram runway and they thought that was Chennai and they ended up making an approach for the Air Force airfield.
Before I tell you the complete story of this very hilarious incident which cost if Saudi Arabian Airlines quite a bit let me first tell you that this is not the first time this has ever happened it has been happening a lot of times where in pilots wanting to land at one Airport somehow end up landing at another Airport which is pretty close by for example in 1993 jet air with itself on their inaugural flight instead of landing at Coimbatore Airport landed at Sulur Airforce.Back in 1972 a Japan Airlines dc-8 instead of landing at Mumbai CSI which is the main airport in Mumbai it landed on Juhu Airport which is which is like literally next to MumbaiAirport and the unfortunate thing is that this particular aircraft overshot the runway because as it was a very short runway so they ended up overshooting the runway and the aircraft was written off so you should think these incidents only
used to happen back in the nineteen hundreds ?!
So let me tell you in 2013 a modified Boeing 747 which is called the dream lifter it's a big modified 747 which carries airplane parts all around the world this particular aircraft carrying some 787 parts was supposed to land at McConnell Air Field in Kansas City but instead of landing at the Air Force Station it ended up landing at a small airfield also in Kansas City pretty close .So this was not the first time that a big aircraft had landed at an airfield.
It was not supposed to land but there was a catch here Tambarum's runway is very short it's only 4,500 feet a 747 is a huge aircraft and requires way more than 4,500 feet to land as well as take off normally. So how in this world did the 747 manage to land first of all and if it landed how did it manage to take off again and go back.
So it was almost getting dark this particular 747 belonging to Saudi Arabian Airlines and on its approach into Chennai the weather was absolutely fine the visibility was great so what the pilot said was that he requested for a visual approach now visual approach is something in which you don't use any instruments or any landing aids to land. So the pilots basically look outside of the cockpit windows physically see the runway and then they land the aircraft on the runway now the critical thing with this is you must see the correct runway to land now the other very critical thing which happened that day was the radar at Chennai airfield was not working !!!!
As a result the air traffic controllers could not see where the 747 was going and which runway it was making an approach for now as luck would when the aircraft was cleared for the visual approach and the pilots looked outside the cockpit window they ended up seeing Tambarum runway instead of Chennai runway Also these pilots were unfamiliar with Chennai airport. So they had no idea how it looked like and that made a nice recipe for disaster.
So now the the aircraft was making an approach for the Chennai runway which is a ten thousand feet long runway but instead the aircraft was making an approach for a runway at Tambarum which is a 4,500 feet long runway. Since it was an evening their Co station was closed and there was no
Air Force flying happening at Tambarum field but the ATC controller was still there and thankfully his radar was working so this ATC controller sees a big 747 is making an approach for his runway so he called up the Chennai ATC guy and he was like "hey you know your aircraft is making an approach for my runway what's happening"
The Chennai controller tried to contact the Saudi Arabian aircraft but was unable to contact him so the ATC controller now asked people who were down close to the runway at Tambaram to fire red coloured flares in the air. I'm sure you would know red coloured flares fired in the air indicate to a landing aircraft that land information is not granted for flares were fired however the 747 pilots either did not see the flares or they ignored them. No one knows but they continued the approach and they landed at Tambarum airfield.
Now as far as they landed the pilots realized their huge mistake but thankfully they had the presence of mind to just jam on the brakes and do everything they could to stop the aircraft because they could see in front of them the runway was running out and the end of the runway was coming close with fully jammed brakes the aircraft ended up blowing four tires because the brakes heated up so much but they still managed to stop on the runway with hundred meters of the runway to spare. But as soon as the aircraft landed the whole of the airport station was woken up and not by the sound of the aircraft but by the emergency situation which was created by a huge passenger jet landing at a very short runway without any permissions without any landing clearance and without any emergency that is a very big deal so as soon as the aircraft stopped it was surrounded by the Air Force and all of their weapons locked and loaded pointed at the aircraft.
The 330 passengers on board had no clue what was happening and they had no idea how close they had come to dying. The passengers were kept on board for five hours while Air Force, DGCA, civil aviation ministry everyone was informed meetings were called phone calls were made and finally it was ruled out and it was realized that the mistake was an honest one wherein the pilot saw the wrong runway and they just landed on the runway so once it was established that the aircraft had landed at the wrong Airport because of just pure human error.
Now the next big problem was how to get the aircraft out of that tiny runway the aircraft was stuck in Tambarum for four days. A lot of meetings were called people from Saudi Arabian Airlines also came in and discussions went on on how to get the aircraft out some people suggested that the aircraft
be broken down and the parts we individually carried to Chennai Airport some people suggested the aircraft be scrapped or maybe just sell it off.
Another idea was to fly the aircraft out of Tambarum after stripping it down completely and that is exactly what was finalized. The aircraft was completely stripped out and when I say completely
it means everything unnecessary was taken out the seats were removed even the air conditioning on the aircraft was removed the fuel on the aircraft was just enough for it to fly from Tambarum to Chennai which is like literally right next to Chennai all of this was being done to make the aircraft as light as possible. A light aircraft always requires a shorter runway to takeoff as compared to a heavier one now with everything removed a very senior pilot from Saudi Arabian Airlines the senior-most instructor on the 747 was called in to fly the aircraft so on that fateful day they had to wait for three and a half hours for the winds to become favorable for the aircraft to take off because I'm sure as all of you know aircraft performance is better when we take off into the wind so they had to wait for three and a half hours just for the winds to change and be suitable enough for this aircraft to take off from the very very short runway. And take off they did historically this was the shortest airfield from which a 747 ever took off the aircraft took 3900 feet of the runway to get airborne. To give you a comparison normally a 747 takes about 8,000 to 9,000 feet of runway to get airborne this one took just about 4000 feet after exactly nine minutes the aircraft landed into Chennai and everything was fine but not for Saudi Arabian Airlines once the aircraft had departed it departed with a bill of 1.16
million riyals which was given by the Indian Air Force to Saudi Arabian Airlines as runway usage and Parking charges for the four days.
So that one tiny mistake of seeing the wrong runway which could have ended much worse only ended with an empty 747 and a bill of 1.16 million.
So that was the story of a 747 which ended up landing at a wrong runway and somehow just somehow managing to take off
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