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I was flying Aero Mexico Cabo to LA in the early 2000s and the plane took steep bank to the right and then to the left before turning around 30 minutes into the flight.
They kept the passengers onboard after landing while we watched the plane being fueled up before it took off again.
Apparently, someone forgot to fuel up the plane before takeoff AND the pilots missed it on their checklist. Last time I flew Aero Mexico.
How long were you waiting on the tarmac between landing and the second takeoff?
It's close to two decades ago so I don't exactly remember but I want to say less than an hour, maybe 30 minutes back at the gate with the fuel truck.
What's the expected incident rate? And is this far outside the probability of random clustering?
As the article points out:
> causes for flight diversions can range from medical (related to crew and passengers), weather (unlikely), unruly activity (we would have heard about that), and mechanical (the most likely). Someone even mentioned solar flares.
But none seem to be the case with these diversions, from what is publicly known.
Two of the Southwest flights are known to be mechanical related:
https://avherald.com/h?article=4fc19a3b&opt=0 https://avherald.com/h?article=4fcfe330&opt=0
AvHerald finally supports HTTPS!
Medical diversions (a passenger gets too sick) are by far the most common type. I find this interesting how the planes are so much more reliable than the passengers on board.
There are also a hundred or more passengers on a transpacific flight. If planes and humans were equally reliable, we'd expect to see medical diversions to outnumber mechanical ones by more than 100:1....
It's because of the redundancies. I have heard "Master Caution/Alarm" blaring on (IIRC two of) my flights, mid flight, and nobody said anything.
We just continued undisturbed and landed as we should. I'm sure the plane went to technical hangar, tho.
If each passenger underwent a 35 point health inspection prior to takeoff like the planes do, the numbers might look different.
Well the people don't get regular maintenance and inspections before every flight where the planes do for starters. It'd be concerning if a random group of a few hundred people were more reliably well than a given mechanical system their lives depend on.
I was on Sydney to LA and we diverted to Hawaii because a passenger died and was taken off. I found it curious that they wouldn’t just wait until LA as the person died in the air so it’s not like they needed immediate attention.
We all stayed on board and we’re maybe down for 20 minutes.
As others have pointed out, redundancy. Consider rather the likelihood of say 3 of 3 passengers falling ill - it's basically zero. (unless, as someone else pointed out, they all had the fish).
Why would you say none of those reasons seem to be the case? We literally don't know, and there's not really any other reason (that's reasonably possible) other than those three.
I may have overstated my case there. Absence of evidence != evidence of absence, after all. Curious to see what the HN community makes of this though. Maybe it's a nothingburger.
LiveATC has archives of air traffic control comms in many places, it's possible that these flights are included. If we know the exact time, it might be possible for someone dedicated enough to check and see what the reported reason was.
If it's not a mechanical emergency (or even a caution) ATC often won't be informed; only if they need emergency equipment to meet, need priority, or have a security issue.
In other words if it's an airline policy diversion ATC may just see a plane requesting deviation from flight path.
> longest stretch of ocean without diversions in the world.
I'm pretty sure this is wrong. LAX - Papetee is 8 hours and the only island that could break it up is probably Hawaii.
Not to mention Auckland->Santiago or Perth -> Jakarta.
https://simpleflying.com/etops-banned-areas/
Seems like ETOPS-330 and above is Santiago-Sydney and Auckland-Buenos Aires. These routes sound technically interesting but not especially fun for passengers. 17+ hours entirely over water.
Rarotonga is ~1000km more distant from LA with a similar great circle route.
By eyeball, there’s only a short segment where Hawaii is closer than LAX or PPT/RAR.
Kiribati might be an option but I don’t know if they have a runway sized for a 767.
Two useful tools for curious flyers: flights.google.com and milecalc.com
Sfo to papette is even longer, seems like no islands to break it up
If you can make it 2/3 of the way, Kiribati and Atuona Airport on Hiva Oa [1] look viable. If you can’t do that, I guess Kona/Hilo or Cabo are your “cross your fingers and pray” airports
This direct flight is probably the longest as you're pretty much over the Pacific from minutes after takeoff to minutes prior to landing. Hawaii is close to equidistant from either end (3800 to 4400 km).
There's an Auckland->Santiago? It doesn't overfly Antartica?
I'm missing out.
I knew there's a Santiago->South Pole. That I did know.
There’s an airport at the South Pole? I thought you landed at an ice airfield near a coastal base and overlanded directly to the pole
Other articles on the site point out that unexpectedly strong headwinds can cause the aircraft to need to return to refuel, and that some aircraft actually need to dump fuel before they can return to get the additional fuel.
This sounds like it might be playing a role. A while back someone posted an article about jet stream changes forcing commercial flights to land.
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/gh/news/article/stronger-j...
Last year in June, my Hawaiian airlines flight leaving Honolulu turned back after 30 minutes into the flight.
No explanation was given, but they put us on a different plane about 3 hours later. But the experience was terrifying to be honest, when the pilot says we are turning around, and there are only miles of ocean in all directions.
People are typically scared of the plane falling out of the sky, right? If it helps at all, planes can still glide really really far with no engines. Not that that would happen.
another thing that sometimes reassures people is (ironically) watching those airplane disaster documentaries, e.g. on YouTube - you can see that planes are actually really robust, and lots of stuff has to go wrong at the same time before it's a real emergency, and how rare some of that stuff is. Mentour Pilot is an actual pilot who does accident documentaries sometimes.
I used to agree, until I found out about Alaska Airlines Flight 261. I'm not sure what fail-safes are built into current Boeing and Airbus planes, but having the horizontal stabilizers malfunction is my new worst case scenario when flying now.
Agreed. I did not get a license (thanks to getting married, getting old, having kids and stuff), however taking flying lessons was the best thing I ever did for myself. Planes want to stay in the air. They don't just crash.
Is this even an unusual number? Diversions are not uncommon, no?
It's usually hard to say. If you're going to do a diversion while flying across the pacific, you're probably going to go to Hawaii regardless of the reason.
And chaos theory says that there will occasionally be groupings of otherwise random events.
Is there some rationale being implied here that I don't understand?
7 flight diversions over 3 weeks doesn't sound like some type of natural disaster or geopolitical conflict to me.
Not that I know anything. Genuinely curious.
5 of them occured within one week, which is an uncommonly high rate of occurrence.
There is quite possibly no connection other than coincidence -- 2 of the 7 we're mechanical problems, after all -- but there may be some connection. For example, wind conditions could have been very unfavorable, putting the smaller aircraft closer to their range limits, exacerbating any other problems by reducing fuel margin.
Why not geopolitical? It's entirely possible that the US military is conducting surprise exercises/weapons tests in the northern Pacific that they gently request diversions away from, though I bet it's more likely to be spare parts supply chain crunches that are nudging airlines to stretch their metal thin (literally)
Note that four of the five not-definitely-known-to-be-mechanical incidents transmitted either to or from San Diego, where a lot of navy exercises start from (the shown flight track diverts near where the navy reported harassment from a mystery drone swarm). Would probably be neat to see if they lined up in time and see if there are any other flights that transmitted around then to immediately kill the hypothesis.
If it helps, in Europe (and with flights from Europe say to Toronto) the main cause for diversions are unruly passengers and technical issues.
Both are on a slight rise post covid
The airport was filled with "Be a little bitch, get a $1m fine" advertisements last time I flew. Was surprised, must be a bit of an issue.
> As you know, causes for flight diversions can range from medical (related to crew and passengers), weather (unlikely), unruly activity (we would have heard about that)
Honest question, not expressing an opinion: for "unruly activity" how would you have heard?
I was on a SFO-Toronto flight, and it diverted to Denver because a passenger got unruly & they had him taken off & arrested. Would this have appeared anywhere online?
In today's society there's a pretty good chance of someone deciding it'll look good on TikTok or Reddit and start filming.
I’ve seen news reports of this many times. I don’t think there’s anything to force the reporting, so maybe it’s missed sometimes?
> longest stretch of ocean without diversions in the world.
TIL.
From the linked article, you could be 3 hours away from a diversion when you are flying to Hawaii.
Thus, there is probably a lower threshold to divert, than say if you were flying trans-continental over the US where there are a lot of diversion options all along the route.
Hotter temperatures make it harder for heavier than air flight. Possible factor?
No; that’s accounted for in flight planning, and ceases to be an issue at altitude.