Can any pilot out there tell me what happened over LA to UAL 1112?

Aviation Notable Activity
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My wife was on UAL 1112 departing TPA for IAH Friday evening.

Here’s the flight track:
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL1112/history/20210402/2125Z/KTPA/KIAH

When the flight reached the central coast of Louisiana, she was awakened by the pilot “firewalling the throttles” (her seat was just in front of the wing, so the enging noise was quite loud). The engine noise woke her up, and people around her were concerned due to the sudden climb also associated with the engine power-up.

Can any pilot or expert look at the “inverted U” on the map for her flight and let me know what you think happened? It almost looks (to the untrained eye) like a diversion to avoid a collision, but that’s a guess.

I am new to Flight Aware, so I cannot figure out how to re-play the “All flights” map for the time this occurred (Friday, April 2, 2021), or why the pilot would have made such a sudden climb and accelerate so suddenly.

Again, sounds like a “near miss” but it would be helpful if someone could pull-up a map of flights in the area at the time to see if there was another plane that intervened in the flight path of my wife’s Boeing 737-800.

Thank you all in advance!

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I think it was too early at that way-point, so it needed to lose some time. That region is a very tightly controlled airspace.
It spooled the engines to keep the altitude while turning, if you see it stayed perfectly at the same flight level.
That’s not a emergency maneuver.

See the “TBD” VORTAC navigation assist radio beacon on this map, right where he did the loop:
https://maps.openaip.net/

tbd
tbd2671×1454 873 KB

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Thanks much, Sonic!

It’s good to know she was safe and not in imminent danger.

We novices need good people like you to help us interpret the “sometimes strange” things that can happen when airborne!

God bless,

David

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