We use to see this back in the day on our setup bench. If the radio we were configuring was able to connect to the tower right here by our NOC using 169.254.1.1 to access it would land you at an AP on a tower 4 hops away... I was alway curious why it was always that same AP. Ran into it remotely a few times also. Also wondered why the radios even passed the 169.254.1 in/out the other interface.
Had forgot all about that happening until I seen your post because it had not happened for... well, I can't remember the last time it happened. Cambium_Sri pointing out it was a bug in some older versions of the software solves a mystery for me that I had forgotten about. Except for the part were it was always ended up in that same AP, that part is still a mystery.