basically half the plot from Choplifter
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Not a fan of many german beers. And before anyone gives me their shit about “But have you tried REAL German beer?”
Yes. I’ve been there. Not my fave stuff.
Plus…they do NOT have good whiskey.
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Ah! agreed, Serendipity; the guardian angel of chance -what a delightful flirt she is! beth yw nefoedd
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That’s 350 miles in completely the wrong direction.
It’s actually 525 miles between the 2 airports. Europe ain’t that small!
I was in Germany for 17 days and have to say that I was a fan of TOO many beers! Especially the liter of goodness I had at a Munich Biergarten in a park.
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They probably didn’t get credit for the extra miles either!
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I think Mark meant that the plane went 350 miles in the wrong direction from its starting point.
350 miles is about the direct distance between London and Edinburgh, so that makes sense.
However, small is relative. 350 miles being the distance between two capital cities is normal for Europe, not so in North America or several other parts of the world.
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You think this was bad. Wait’ll Brexit. Then you’ll really see some s%^t.
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The Story of EBW 343
As someone with family in Cologne, I would find it absolutely delightful to arrive in Edinburgh instead of Düsseldorf.
FTR, local news in Düsseldorf is reporting:
Shortly before the start, the pilot reportedly made the announcement to the passengers that the flight would go to Edingburgh. A passenger is said to have asked the crew if the announcement was a joke. Thereupon the pilot made a “survey” via announcement. The passengers who want to go to Dusseldorf should raise their hands. Said, done: Everyone raised their hands. Apparently the pilot thought it was a joke - because according to his papers, it was with the plane to Edinburgh - and not in the Northrine-Westphalian state capital.
I would have asked to leave the plane in Edinburgh, that’s for sure!
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that’s true. A few years ago I read some cop in Texas apologized for hasseling the wrong person. It made the newspapers.
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This is my theory – a company dispatcher, one of the many people who work behind the scenes at major airliners and FBOs filing flight plans and doing all the tedious fuel and weight and balance calculations etc. – began entering the ICAO code for the Düsseldorf Aiport, EDDL, and it auto-completed to EDI which is the IATA code for Edinburgh (one of the dangers of dueling standards boards).
The flight plan got sent to both the pilots (who assumed they were indeed meant to fly to Edinburgh, and programmed it into the flight control system) and ATC who only know anything about a flight from the filed plan.
In fact in all of the coverage about this the journalists seem genuinely alarmed that ATC didn’t discover there was a problem. But ATC is there to ensure safe travel along a route as filed. If the plane had actually began to divert from its course to Edinburgh, then ATC would be fairly concerned.
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Aye, sadly the litmus test for a good day in 2019.
Ditto, but I’d have to remind myself that once, before the advent of smart phones, I drove across the continental US and wound up in the wrong state, so navigators in glass houses and all that.
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Why did they even land? You have to think the accent from the air traffic controller would have tipped them off. Play it cool and say, Hey, we were just taking the scenic route to Dusseldorf.
Right?
What a crazy reality we live in…
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What I find puzzling is how the issue slipped by everybody until the arrived at the completely wrong place.
I can imagine wires getting crossed and the flight plan for A234 getting filed for A243 and air traffic control seeing nothing amiss; or a bored, tired, flight crew inadvertently executing their next flight plan rather than their current one or something; it’s having everything line up so that nobody raises an eyebrow that seems like it’s beating the odds.
Having individual mistakes is more the rule than the exception; but having enough mistakes line up that the result doesn’t get questioned on sheer incongruity is more of a trick.
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