Quote:
Originally Posted by DeepPurple
In 1975..
..About a year later in May 1978 I was working in Pensacola Approach Control (radar controller). Our ILS Runway was closed for repaving and we had no instrument landing available other than a controller instructed Surveillance Approach to Rwy 9/27. We had heavy thunderstorms coming through the area and National 193 from Tampa was inbound and wanted a surveillance approach. My team was working that night, the controller next to me was handling final approach. Most of us never do surveillance approaches, or at least not since our military days. It's where you give detailed instructions to the pilot and he follows those instructions until he sees the runway. His altitude is determined by already published altitudes, the MDA for this approach to Rwy 27 was 520 feet. Runway 27 final is over Pensacola Bay for about 5 miles with the last mile over houses and the shoreline is rather step for Florida, it's like California with a 100' cliff. Around two mile final the pilots mistook a barge and it's lights in the bay for the runway, and with gear and flaps down made a perfect landing on the water. Fortunately only 3 people died, they drown but the barge was able to pick up most of the survivors. The aircraft did not break up and was sold about a month later for a $1 million dollars and floated up and taken away.
Had crash happened a mile later, it would of been a total disaster.
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I never knew how this mishap occurred.