Uhmm.. Wrong airport pal

[Minimalist]

Eh...close enough for government work.

[Johan]

And yet while riding the bus I can track my location to within a few feet. Maybe airline pilots should carry cheap cell phones...you know.. just in case? :)

The GPS units in transport category aircraft, and even retrofitted units in antique single engine piston puddle jumper aircraft, are every bit as accurate and far more bullet proof than the GPS in your phone. But they only tell you where you are when you're using them or if you're actually looking at the display. If you're just flying visually off of what you see out the window, as this crew obviously was, GPS can't help you.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Something just doesn't pass the smell test with this. Yes, we know it should smell like Suave shampoo, Ocean Breeze scented, but instead it smells like the ocean..you know.. rotten fish and all the other nasty smells of the ocean?

[Johan]

Something just doesn't pass the smell test with this.

Colonel James Jabara Airport, the airport they landed at, has a single runway which is aligned on a magnetic heading of 360 degrees i.e. directly north and south. McConnell Air Force Base, the airport they were looking for, is about 12 miles due south of the other airport and also has a single runway aligned in almost the exact same direction. If you don't understand how those facts could lead a pilot to mistake one airport for the other, my only advice would be to go take some flying lessons and work your way up to the point of having to fly solo from one airport to another. I can assure you it will become abundantly clear to you at that point why this does indeed pass any smell test with flying colors.

Edit: Better yet, try this experiment for yourself. Get a single quarter and single nickel and a whole roll of dimes.  Take the quarter and nickel and put them on the ground about 2ft from each other and then open the roll of dimes and spread them out evenly in the area of a 3ft circle which surrounds the quarter and nickel. If you stand directly over them and look down, it should be fairly easy to identify which is the quarter and which is the nickel in the sea of dimes. Now walk about 30' away and see if you can pick out the nickel from the quarter. That's what its like trying to identify one airport from another visually from 20 or 30 miles away while descending for landing.