More than 100 Delta passengers on board a flight bound for Rapid City, South Dakota got an unexpected surprise Thursday night when their plane mistakenly landed at an Air Force Base, about five miles north of the aircraft's intended target. 
 
 Ellsworth Air Force Base confirmed in a statement to ABC that while it was an unauthorized landing, "Base officials followed the proper procedures to address the situation and ensure the safety of our Airmen, their families and the passengers." 
 
 Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident. 
 
 "The pilots of the Airbus A320 had been cleared to land at Rapid City Regional Airport. The aircraft instead touched down at Ellsworth Air Force Base, shortly before 7:45 p.m. local time," the FAA released in a statement to ABC News. 
 
 Col. Gentry Boswell, 28th Bomb Wing commander at Ellsworth Air Force Base, told ABC News that while the Ellsworth Radar Approach control does control the high-level airspace for approximately 40 miles from the base, the Air Traffic Control Towers at each runway control all aircraft in their local area which is a 5-mile radius up to and including 5,900 feet. 
 
 "The Radar Approach Control gave instructions to the Delta flight in this instance and pointed out BOTH runways to the flight crew to alleviate any issues with identification of the correct airport and the crew replied they had the landing runway at Rapid City Regional Airport in sight," said Boswell. 
 
 "This was a gross breach of the security of our Airfield that present[ed] a potential threat to both our Airmen and our resources," Boswell added. 
 
 According to Boswell, the two runways are located 5 miles from each other and are oriented in roughly the same direction. However, the runway at Ellsworth is 13,500 feet long and 300 feet wide and marked at the threshold with a large "13" number, while the runway at Rapid City Regional Airport is only 8,701 feet long and only 150 feet wide and marked with a large "14." 
 
 "Incidents like this occur when pilots fail to execute the basic measures of airmanship," said Boswell. 
 
 The flight crew of the Airbus A320 has since been taken off-duty, according to Delta. 
 
 "Delta will fully cooperate with that investigation and has already begun an internal review of its own. Safety is always Delta’s top priority," the airline said in a statement. 
 
 The flight, which took off from Minneapolis/St. Paul, did eventually leave for Rapid City after coordinating with officials, Delta added in the statement. Expected to land at 8:50 p.m. local time, Delta flight 2845 eventually landed nearly three hours later at 11:31 p.m. local time. 
 
 Rapid City Regional Airport Public Information Officer Toni Broom told ABC News "It’s an airline issue and it’s being handled by Delta." 
 
 According to the FAA, this is not the first time this has happened. In 2004, a Northwest Airlines flight, also headed to Rapid City, also accidentally landed at Ellsworth Air Force Base. 
 
 ABC News Aviation John Nance, a former Air Force Pilot and commercial airline pilot, says this type of incident usually occurs because of "target fixation," when one pilot fixates on an airfield or runway, and neither co-pilot confirms this with the aircraft's navigation aids. 
 
 According to Nance, there's usually a distracting element too -- either an issue with the Air Traffic Control Tower, weather, etc. 
 
 "The only way you beat it is by specifically training [pilots] so that no one makes a landing without both crew members confirming with the navigational equipment," said Nance. 
 
 ABC News' Thomas Thornton contributed to this report. ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — A Delta Air Lines jetliner with 130 passengers on board landed at the wrong airport in South Dakota Thursday evening, said a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident. 
 
 The Delta A320 landed at Ellsworth Air Force Base at 8:42 p.m. Central Time Thursday, when its destination was an airport in Rapid City, board spokesman Peter Knudson said Friday. 
 
 Ellsworth is about 10 miles due north of Rapid City Regional Airport. The two airports have runways that are oriented nearly identically to the compass, from northwest to southeast. 
 
 Delta Flight 2845 had departed from Minneapolis. A passenger interviewed by the Rapid City Journal said she and her fellow passengers waited about 2½ hours in the plane at Ellsworth, where they were ordered to pull down their window shades as military personnel walked through the cabin with at least one firearm and a dog. 
 
 This was not the first time airline pilots have mistaken the Air Force base for the Rapid City airport. In 2004, a Northwest Airlines flight carrying 117 passengers to Rapid City landed at Ellsworth. The plane remained on the ground for more than three hours as the pilots explained to Air Force security officers what went wrong, and a new crew was dispatched to continue the flight to Rapid City. 
 
 Northwest and Delta merged 2008. 
 
 Delta has contacted the passengers "and offered a gesture of apology for the inconvenience," the airline said in a statement. 
 
 The crew has been taken off-duty while NTSB investigates, the statement said. "Delta will fully cooperate with that investigation and has already begun an internal review of its own," it added. 
 
 The Air Force said in a statement that the base officials "followed the proper procedures to address the situation" and ensured the safety of those at the base and passengers. 
 
 Citing security reasons, base officials declined to answer questions from The Associated Press regarding the specific procedures followed during the incident and whether air traffic controllers at the base were in contact with the pilot and authorized the landing. 
 
 Landings at wrong airports by commercial pilots, while unusual, are still more common than many passengers may realize or airlines would like to acknowledge. 
 
 An Associated Press search two years ago of government safety data and news reports since the early 1990s found at least 150 flights in which U.S. commercial passenger and cargo planes have either landed at the wrong airport or started to land and realized their mistake in time. 
 
 Of the 35 documented wrong landings, at least 23 occurred at airports with shorter runways, creating potential safety issues. 
 
 In most cases, the pilots were cleared by controllers to fly based on what they could see rather than relying on automation. Many incidents occurred at night, with pilots reporting they were attracted by the runway lights of the first airport they saw during descent. Some pilots said they disregarded navigation equipment that showed their planes slightly off course because the information didn't match what they were seeing out their windows — a runway straight ahead. 
 
 On Jan. 12, 2014, the pilots of a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700 stopped their plane just short of a ravine at the end of a short runway in Hollister, Missouri, when they had meant to land on a runway twice as long at nearby Branson. 
 
 A few months earlier, an Atlas Air Boeing 747 freighter landed at the tiny Jabara Airport in Wichita, Kansas, instead of McConnell Air Force Base about eight miles away. The runway is considered 3,000 feet less than ideal for the plane, one of the largest in the world. It took about 10 hours to turn the plane around and ready it for takeoff again. A nearby highway was shut down as a safety precaution. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Garcia Cano reported from Sioux Falls, S.D.
– Oops: Some 130 Delta passengers were stuck on the tarmac for hours Thursday night after they were mistakenly taken to a military airport instead of a civilian one. The airline says Flight 2845 landed at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota instead of Rapid City Regional Airport, which is around 5 miles away, KEVN reports. Armed military personnel walked through the cabin while the plane was at the base and passengers were ordered to keep their window shades closed. This was a "gross breach of the security of our Airfield that present[ed] a potential threat to both our Airmen and our resources," Col. Gentry Boswell, 28th Bomb Wing commander at the base, tells ABC. Boswell says the runways at the two airports are oriented in roughly the same direction, though the one at the Air Force base is much longer and wider than the Rapid City one the Delta crew had been cleared to land at. "Incidents like this occur when pilots fail to execute the basic measures of airmanship," he says. The passengers arrived at their destination more than two hours late after a new crew was dispatched. Delta says it is investigating the incident and passengers were offered a "gesture of apology," reports the AP, which notes that there have been at least 35 wrong landings of commercial flights in the US over the last 25 years. (In 2014, a Southwest Airlines pilot had to do a lot of heavy braking after mistakenly landing at an airport with a runway much shorter than the one he expected.)