Continental Grounds Pilots Who Landed at Wrong Airport
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CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The two pilots of a Continental Airlines jet that landed in the right city but the wrong airport have been grounded while investigators looked into the mix-up.
The airline blamed pilot error for the Boeing 737’s bumpy landing Sunday at a World War II-era Navy airfield 4 1/2 miles from Corpus Christi International Airport. None of the 59 people on the flight from Houston were hurt.
Continental spokesman Dave Messing and Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Roland Herwig said they did not know whether controllers at the right airport had noted a problem or what contact they had had with the pilots, who Messing would not identify. He said he did not know how long they had been flying for the airline.
Passengers were kept waiting on the jet for two hours for the arrival of stairs to get off the plane. They were bused to the right airport.
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