This is an excerpt from a report made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The narrative is written by the pilot, rather than FAA or NTSB officials. To maintain anonymity, many details, such as aircraft model or airport, are often scrubbed from the reports.
Returning to Hampton Airfield (7B3) in New Hampshire late at night, turned on the runway lights, and landed in between them.
However, the lights border the grass runway, rather than the asphalt runway that I meant to land on. As a result, I landed on the grass runway, when I expected to land on asphalt.
This was potentially dangerous if the grass runway was blocked with snow (it was not, fortunately). The grass runway was not operational at the time (NOTAM to that effect).
No adverse effect happened, but it was not ideal.
It’s not clear that in order to land on the asphalt, I’d have to land OUTSIDE the two sets of runway lights, which border the turf runway. Adding a third row of runway lights (on the other side of the asphalt runway) would make it much clearer for a night landing.
Primary Problem: Human Factors
ACN: 1795166
I’m struggling to understand how landing on a closed runway (even though it was lit) is not pilot error. I also don’t understand how the pilot could not tell it was not asphalt or concrete during the flare and execute a go around if unsure of the surface. The write up also made it sound like the pilot departed the airport so he should have had some knowledge of the facility. Adding a third row of runway lights seems to guarantee an accident for pilots that have seen centerline lighting systems at other fields.
I used to fly out of a field in Tulsa that had a short asphalt strip but a much longer and wider parallel grass strip that was lighted. The asphalt was used by a few almost exclusively for departures to cut down on FOD to the props and everyone landed on the grass.
Was 7B3 the pilot’s home field? It’s really odd that (according to the reporter) the grass (Lighted) runway was NOTAMed closed. Airport management seems to be a bit behind on their duties.