Air Aisa A330 lands at wrong airport!

[DavidP 1,410]

They (or the PIC) made a data entry error, an honest mistake.  What will get them fired is not the mistake but ignoring the warning systems that tried to draw their attention to it.

The "honest" mistake also resulted in the aircraft turning left off runway 16R across the take offpath of runway 16L. Lucky that there was not a parallel take off taking place as the risk of a mid air was enormous. Especially when there are cautions on departure plates "DO NOT TURN LEFT". There could have been catastrophic consequences.

[HighBypass 2,339]

Another question from a layman. How soon did the aircrew stop hand flying the plane after takeoff and activate the autopilot and FMC? Surely not +ve rate, gear up...Click..

 

If you're hand flying and following the appropriate SID chart, you would not turn towards the other parallel runway. As David says, the plates have warnings on them...

[sevenflyer 12]

Well, according to the article, the autopilot was turned on at 410 feet (I presume that means AGL). So that would be very close to +ve rate, gear up,  click

The SID must have been programmed in, which is why the AP was turned on, so it wasn;t going to be hand flown.

 

                                              - Roger Neves