BRANSON, Mo., Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Two pilots who inadvertently landed their Boeing 737-700 at the wrong Missouri airport were placed on paid leave, Southwest Airlines said.
The announcement Monday came after an investigation of the incident by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board began.
The unidentified captain of the flight is a 14-year Southwest employee, and the first officer has been with Southwest for 12 years, the company said.
Flight 4013 from Chicago, with 124 passengers aboard, was to arrive at the Branson, Mo., airport Sunday evening, but instead landed in Hollister, Mo., an airport seven miles away and with a runway about half the length of the runway in Branson, the Kansas City Star reported.
Officials said the plane stopped 300 feet from the end of the Hollister runway, which overlooks a ledge, a steep embankment and an interstate highway.
There were no injuries.
Southwest said it apologized to the passengers, refunded their tickets, provided future travel credits and bused them to Branson.
Former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo said it was a case of pilot error, of failure to monitor the plane's instruments and lack of attention paid to runway numbers and other visible cues.
It occurs when pilots choose to "hand-fly" their planes instead of allowing on-board computers to do it, Schiavo said.
"If they had been flying on instruments, it would have taken them straight in [to the Branson airport]," she said.
