Why It's Not Quite As Uncommon As You Think For Planes To Land At The Wrong Airport

Have you ever been en route to the grocery store only to start daydreaming and eventually realize you went on "autopilot" and drove to work instead? It happens to all of us. But does it happen to airline pilots, too? Airplanes do sometimes land at the wrong airport, but it's not because the pilot is too busy thinking about which appetizer they're going to order at the Cheesecake Factory that night to land the plane in the right city.

To find out why planes land in the wrong places and how often, Islands spoke to Barbi, a veteran flight attendant who has more than earned her wings — and wisdom — with nearly forty years of experience flying for a major U.S. airline. So why, exactly, might your flight to Peoria end up landing in Poughkeepsie instead? "It's not by accident," Barbi tells us. "It's by design and necessity, and correctly called a diversion or reroute."

The reasons why Air Traffic Control (ATC) might divert a flight from its intended destination to another airport include issues like planes running too low on fuel to circle while waiting for a landing slot or environmental conditions, like major storms. But it's rarer than you might think. Barbi cites the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, telling us that "only 0.24 percent of all flights were diverted in 2023." Meanwhile, if you think turbulence and bad weather are increasing, that's not your imagination at all: many of those rougher flights are caused by climate change.

"To give you an idea of how many planes were diverted in 2017," veteran flight attendant Brandi told Islands, "the number of diversions of major U.S. carriers was 12,530." That's out of an annual ten million domestic flights per year, so the odds of it happening are low.

Still, it's frustrating when it happens to you. Unhappy passengers can feel puzzled when they see other planes landing at their destination airport, as one Redditor did when their flight from Las Vegas to Denver was diverted at the last minute to Rapid City, South Dakota. Other planes were landing in Denver, so why not theirs? This can happen when bad weather slows traffic down, limiting the number of planes that can safely land at that time and turning the skies into an airborne version of musical chairs. Some flights will have to land elsewhere, refuel, and resume the trip again later, as this Redditor's flight did.

Although you may continue on the same plane, or at the very least be automatically rebooked to continue on to your destination, some of the best tips for dealing with canceled or delayed flights can also apply to diverted flights, should you need to contact the airline to modify your plans. And there are preventative measures you can take, too. Lower rates of flight disruption is just one of several reasons travel guru Samantha Brown recommends booking flights early in the day.

Passengers on a flight from Puerto Rico to Miami ended up trapped in an airport in the Bahamas when a hurricane forced their plane to land on August 12, 2024. Many passengers weren't carrying passports on what should have been a domestic flight, so they weren't able to leave the airport during the grueling 14-hour layover. It was an unpleasant situation for everyone involved, from passengers to airline employees.

Should something like this happen to you, check your air rage at the gate, because you never know when the worst of times will reveal the best of humanity. In the wake of 9/11, 38 flights containing 7,000 passengers were diverted to the tiny town of Gander in Newfoundland, Canada. The townspeople were so welcoming, and the passengers were so grateful for the hospitality, that an extraordinary bonding experience occurred for one at all. For some, it was life-changing: Stranded passengers Nick and Diane Marson met there in side-by-side shelter beds, and married a year later.

The historic air traffic incident eventually became the basis for the award-winning 2015 Broadway musical "Come From Away." Talk about twists of fate: Fast-forward to 2017, and Nick and Diane found themselves backstage rubbing elbows with Whoopi Goldberg and Sharon Wheatley, who portrayed Diane in the feel-good musical. The moral of the story? Always bring your passport, even on a domestic flight — and always be ready to find the silver lining when boarding a silver bird.