Whoops! A Northwest DC-10 Once Landed in the Wrong Country

All pilots have made mistakes, but one Northwest pilot in 1995 flew his passengers to the wrong country. To make matters worse, the crew realized they were not flying to the right airport until the last minute, but landed anyway.

This story is always a cautionary tale for on-board crew as a reminder to ensure your flight information is accurate before taking off and to not lose focus during communications.

A Brussels Reshuffle

On 5 September, 1995, a Northwest Airlines McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 carrying 241 passengers departed Detroit, Michigan and was headed for Frankfurt, Germany. It felt like an ordinary flight, until the pilot noticed something was wrong upon landing.

Towards the end of the flight, the crew contacted the ATC at the airport they were approaching with the intention of landing. But even as they referred to the airport as ‘Frankfurt’, the ATC didn’t seem to be confused.

The pilot was seemingly familiar with Frankfurt Airport and was expected to see white concrete runways upon landing. Instead, the runways were made of black asphalt.

Immediately, he realized he was not in the right location. But for the safety of the passengers on board, the crew decided to land anyway and figure things out on the ground.

That’s when they found out that despite following data on the console, that they landed in Brussels, Belgium, about 250 miles away from Frankfurt.

Flight attendants and passengers knew something was wrong upon landing as the live map display was indicating that a ‘detour’ was taking place.

Who Was to Blame?

Aviation experts were quick to blame the flight crew on Flight 52 with the words ‘The only people on that plane who didn’t know where they were were the three guys up front’. As a result of landing at the wrong airport, Northwest suspended the three pilots in charge of the flight. The captain was allegedly a 30-year veteran at the time of the flight with a ‘spotless record’.

The Irish Aviation Authority acknowledged the flight traveled towards Frankfurt, and it denied changing the flight information in any way. This was the last such group to have information on the flight before it was supposedly going to Frankfurt.

Maastricht Air Traffic Control (MUAC) was the entity that communicated the flight crew to land. Originally for a flight from Northern United States to Germany, crews would fly directly over Belgium to reach it. However, something from this communication must have happened to cause the crew to land prematurely and at the wrong airport.

Northwest flew to Brussels regularly in addition to Frankfurt, so the ATC wasn’t unfamiliar with Northwest jets. It also didn’t help matters that the ATC didn’t correct Northwest when the crew mentioned Frankfurt. Doing so likely would have averted the pilot from landing in the wrong country altogether.

It wasn’t known if the MUAC disciplined the ATC for his or her role in the landing mix-up.

Northwest continued to fly until 31 January 2010 when the company merged with Delta Air Lines. This move allowed Delta to become the world’s largest airline, surpassing United and American.