AIR FORCE PLANE LANDS ON WRONG AIRSTRIP

A gigantic OOPS! What caused a huge Air Force Cargo plane to land at the wrong airstrip in Tampa? Some amazing iPhone video shows the tenuous landing.

---

Closed Caption:

Oh No
oh my god
yeah
we're following this news alert in tampa
it's a giant loops and Air Force c-17
landed at the wrong Airport officials
are trying to figure out how the mistake
happen now the huge military jet was
headed to macdill air force base but the
pilot landed at Peter Oh night a small
municipal airport nearby davis islands
fox13 steph TP tran Tonio is live at
Peter Oh night and step big cargo jet
small runway
how are they going to fix it you know
chip that is the four hundred thousand
pound question here tonight
as you can see the massive aircraft is
still stuck here behind me on the
airstrip and it looks like it's going to
be there for a little while the root
problem here is the airstrip is only
designed to hold about 20,000 pounds of
you do the math
they've got a lot of work to do here to
lighten the load and it's really
becoming somewhat of a spectacle here
along the fence along the sidelines here
folks keep asking how do you think it's
going to make it off this runway and get
over to macdill skybox got some amazing
angles of this just a little while ago
it's been on the ground since about 120
130 this afternoon
the scuttlebutt here on the street is
from some pilots we spoke with is that
the aircraft may be grounded for maybe
up to 24 hours
now one of those pilots was a corporate
pilot you heard his video there from his
iphone he saw the whole thing
he was waiting for his plane to leave to
go back over 2t i-a when he saw this
c-17 flying too low
he said he laughed to himself he knew
the pilot must have made a mistake and
gotten the wrong airstrip
another thing we're hearing here on the
sidelines is it people are also
complementing that pilot on making a
safe landing at keeping in mind yeah
this may be one big poops but the good
thing is is the plane landed safely in a
very crowded neighborhood here on davis
islands
nobody got hurt except maybe the pilots
our pride a little bruising here tonight
ship step
the question is how does it take off
that runway over there was 1000 feet too
short for that massive plan to get back
up in the air what are they going to do
take it apart
well one of the guys we spoke with who
is a pilot him and his wife were sitting
here on the sidelines
we're told that the strip is about
35,000 3,500 feet long
and that kind of plane can take off in
just that amount of space
i did some research and I guess the
northeast and the southwest strips here
were lengthened back in two thousand
eight they're going to need every inch
they can to get this thing off the
airstrip now the good news is they can
take some fuel out of the plane they can
take whatever cargo might be on the
plane off of there potentially two buses
have shown up behind me here from
MacDill we don't know what's going on
out there yet
all the Air Force has said is they've
confirmed it's one of their planes
landed here
what they're going to do to either light
in the plane or move it we don't know
yet chip so they're not saying how we
ended up at Peter or night because
there's no control tower at that Airport
there is not a control tower in fact one
of our Fox 13 producers Alan Federals
who is also a pilot
this is what's called an uncontrolled
airstrip they're really the pilots rely
on each other and line of sight there's
no tower
you're talking to land here of course
over a big deal you're talking to
several folks
this was actually Tampa's main airport
from nineteen thirty five to nineteen
forty-five built as part of the works
progress administration
so now it's just a local municipal
airstrip but you're really going to rely
on that old gentleman's way here chip to
land by talking about the pilots and
just using your line of sight and see
who's out who else is in the air
I think one of the big problems too is
we've had some extreme heat here this
past 10 days those airships you get a
plane that heavy landing on something
like that it could sink there could be
damage to the airstrip
there's gonna be a lot of questions
after this plane I finally get out of
here chip
alright thanks a lot to appreciate that