| ▲ | PearlRiver 12 hours ago |
| There was a Belgian passenger plan that got lost on its way to Teheran and had to land in Grozny. Before GPS planes had literal human navigators with maps and sextants! I would be more inclined to believe in the Bermuda triangle myth if it happened with modern planes and their transponders. |
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| ▲ | macintux 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Your comment reminded me about the concrete arrows deployed across the U.S. for pilots. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/before-radios-pilots-n... According to that, Montana still uses them. |
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| ▲ | andy99 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Reminds me that there were a number of planes that landed accidentally on the runway of an Air Force base close to Heathrow, apparently because it shared some similar landmarks, some kind of gas tanks the pilots were using as waypoints: https://simpleflying.com/pan-am-707-raf-northolt/ | |
| ▲ | buildsjets 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Unfortunately, they de-commissioned the airway beacon system as an official navaid and stopped maintenance for the ground markers during the pandemic. Most are still there, but unlighted and unmaintained. A limited few are being operated by a historical society. https://www.mdt.mt.gov/aviation/beacons.aspx | |
| ▲ | abbycurtis33 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Absolutely unbelievable there's not an overhead picture in that article. | | |
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| ▲ | EdwardDiego 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| IIRC some passenger aircraft had a sweet periscopic sextant installed, and even the 747 still had a sextant port - not that it stopped KAL-007 crossing the Kamchatka peninsula... |
