Cathay Pacific 071 Interesting Diversion

Here is the ACARS report:

ACARS mode: 1 Aircraft reg: B-LID ]
Message label: ** Block id: @ Msg no: 01df
Flight id: CX0071 [MIA-IAH-ANC] [Cathay Pacific]
Message content:-
SBS-1 Callsign: CPA071

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/CPA71/history/20090326/1243Z/KIAH/KSFO

Let the speculations begin…:slight_smile:

Is this a freighter? Could be mechanical, if aa pax a/c medical…who knows. That’s my guess(s) NEXT :wink:

Sorry…Yes this is a frieghter. Here’s a picture:

flickr.com/photos/mitrebuad/3339561392/

Construction Number 36869
Line Number 1414
Aircraft Type Boeing 747-467(ER)(F)(SCD)
First Flight 04-02-2009
Age 0.1 Years

Doesn’t CPA have freighter ops out of CYVR? Why would it take them getting as far as CYXS to turn around, and come back to SFO? In fact, they were just about at …

Wait a second… Mount Redoubt, anyone?

BL.

Damnit tyketto! You took my guess. Redoubt went KABOOM (aka, a “major explosive event”) about 1:24 Eastern with ash estimated to have gone up to 65,000’ . After the eruption, the “aviation color code” was set to red.

msnbc.msn.com/id/29898497/

Cool photo

NICE!

Hey, is someone checking to make sure that volcano is using carbon offsets? It sure is putting a lot of pollution into the sky!

We should have some pretty nice sunrises and sunsets in the coming months :smiley:

I bet Gov. Jindal is eating some serious crow right now.

With that, I can understand the diversion from PANC. However I still wonder why not divert to CYVR instead of them coming to KSFO? According to their website, they have facilities at the field.

BL.

:open_mouth: :open_mouth: WOW!! Cool pic!!

Good call on the diversion, they didn’t want to pull a KLM.

[quote=“IADFXMD11HVY”]

Wow, I wonder how loud that KABOOOOOOM was?

The pilots were probably thinking the same thing I would have thought if I saw that mushroom cloud of ash. Get as far away from that thing as your fuel tanks will take you!!!

Theory: Maybe CPA decided to cancel it’s flight from VHHH to SFO and instead use the diverted IAH flight to pick up cargo.

[quote=“lieberma”]

[Marvin the Martian Voice]Where’s the KABOOM. There was supposed to be an Earth shattering KABOOM"[/Marvin the Martian Voice]

[quote=“pika1000”]

Classic!

After a 7h 20m flight from Houston, I’m sure most of those guys have timed out… If I recall correctly, CX’s largest 747 base is in KSFO. They might have a crew swap. Now to contradict myself, CPA091D is just now leaving KSFO as of 30 seconds ago headed non-stop to VHHH, so they might not have swapped crews. To add to it, going completely off schedule, CPA071 just took off from KMIA again and is headed to Houston for the second straight day, this time with a nice daytime landing there. Oddly enough, ACARS shows B-LID still as going to fly the CPA071 Routing.

CPA091D:
flightaware.com/live/flight/CPA9 … /KSFO/VHHH

I was thinking about this this morning…

I wonder if it came down to logistics. It was definitely a freighter, so they wouldn’t have picked up any passengers, especially if the plane in question was a B744ERF… but for the crew to completely overfly Canada, then back through Canada again must have meant that as far as Visas/Passports go, they weren’t authorized to ENTER Canada. They didn’t have a base at SEA, and their only US west coast cargo divisions are at LAX and SFO. So they went to their closest base.

Seeing that Redoubt is blowing its top again, I wonder how FDX and UPS ops are at PAFA and PANC are handling it…

BL.

http://flightaware.com/live/diversions.rvt

You can see all the diversions listed…

None that are shown as diversions, so that’s when I thought about if they have been scheduled already to a different location because of this incident.

I was right:
flightaware.com/live/flight/CPA7 … /KIAH/CYVR

Scheduled to Vancouver now even though earlier this morning it was to Anchorage.