Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Flight Instructor
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 109; Flight Crew Total 9765; Flight Crew Type 1276
Distraction; Confusion; Communication Breakdown; Situational Awareness
ATC Issue All Types; Airspace Violation All Types; Deviation - Track / Heading All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Unstabilized Approach
Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic; Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Airspace Structure; Human Factors; Procedure
The trip was to fly one passenger 130 miles to a sleepy; hardly used airport with a contract control tower. It was a Sunday morning with little or no traffic; the weather was CAVU everywhere; and the winds were calm. It should have been a simple flight.The takeoff; climb; enroute; and initial descent portions of the flight were uneventful. As we continued our descent and the city came into view; the confusion set in. My co-pilot; a young; experienced flight instructor just learning the ropes of the charter business and a good pilot; reported he had the field in sight. The picture didn't fit for me; and I suspected he was seeing the second (and largest) airport at our destination city. I kept scanning visually for our destination airport; but could not find it. We maintained the same basic ground track as I continued to look; and we were now about 2 miles from the airport my copilot had in sight. I finally convinced myself that my co-pilot was right; and we accepted a visual approach to the very obvious former air base. The approach controller immediately turned us over to the control tower; who immediately instructed us to fly a right hand base; and cleared us to land. We had maintained our altitude (2;000 AGL) while looking for the airport and now found ourselves high on the approach. I chopped power; put out gear and full flaps; and we s-turned through final in order to get down. The landing was uneventful. And we were at the right airport.As we rolled out on the runway; the controller in the tower asked us to explain our deviations on final. He said we had failed to turn final on time; and that we had busted his separation with a VFR flight crossing thru his class D airspace. I explained the fact that we were too high; and needed the s-turn to make it down. He was obviously upset; and let us know it. His displeasure came as quite a surprise to me. I did not see our s-turn as a significantly large excursion from that of a normal base and final. Rather; since I was cleared to land; I considered it my prerogative to maneuver as necessary to ensure a safe landing. As I look back on the situation; I wonder if the controller was in a situation similar to where the car you're following takes a lot longer than you thought it would to turn into a driveway; and now you've got to break hard or turn out to get around him.With all of this being said; there is one important lesson I have taken from this incident. I had been lulled into thinking this was going to be a very easy flight because I had flown into this city and this airport dozens of times before. The only problem was that those dozens of times before I had flown into the OTHER airport. The co-pilot loaded the correct airport into the GPS; and we flew directly to it. My assumption regarding our destination airport was wrong. I had the wrong airport. No wonder it didn't fit the picture! This whole thing could have been avoided by one very simple action by me. It's called better pre-flight planning. Since this incident occurred I have made a vow that going forward; regardless of the simplicity of the flight; I will make it a part of my pre-flight planning routine to verify the destination airport; and to study the relative position of that airport with respect to other airports near my destination. I'll gladly trade a few minutes of extra preparation to eliminate the confusion I experienced looking for the wrong airport and/or avoiding a potentially more disastrous event.
The pilot of an air-taxi operation allowed himself to become distracted; searching visually for the lesser used of two airports in close proximity. This caused him to be high on approach; and the subsequent S-turns on final approach were questioned by ATC since they had caused a separation issue.