KDFW Closed due to Weather -- Diverts active on 131.025 MHz

Aviation Notable Activity
1

AAL2228 (KHDN/KDFW) has just been diverted to KTUL, per dispatch channel (17:15 CST). It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes for ‘divert’ status to get posted via FAA datafeed.

It’s been storming in Dallas all afternoon.

131.025 MHz is AAL’s Dispatch frequency.

AAL1110 (KSAT/KDFW) and AAL2342 (KGUC/KDFW) are next in line for divert decisions to KSAT and KTUL respectively.

KDFW is shut down as of 17:29. The divert of AAL2228 does not yet show on the Flight Activity page.

More diverts to come, probably to KAUS and KIAH.

2

AAL1203 is shown to have arrived KDFW at 5:13. It didn’t.

That flight, from CYYZ, is holding over Ardmore, OK. Flight tracking shows a few minutes of activity that we might otherwise call ‘VFR flight following’. There really should be one track from CYYZ. FA data is only as good as what FAA tells it, however.

3

KDFW is either open now or about to be opened. There is another band of storms to the west that may affect the airport later tonight.

AAL Dispatch is still quite active on 131.025 MHz.

Does anyone know whether the weather overlay map is ‘real-time’ or delayed 6 minutes as the flights are?

4

The “divert” indication is sometimes unreliable although we have a few tricks up our sleeve to improve it.

The NEXRAD radar latency varies – generally 1 to 15 minutes.

5

NEXRAD weather shows KDFW is about to be slammed again. I am hearing AAL flights being given divert instructions to Austin and Corpus Christi. A flight coming from Houston Bush evidently missed a landing approach. No second chance available. He’s being sent to Corpus.

Btw, Discovery Channel had a quasi-documentary tonight on a (hypothetical) “super-tornado” hitting downtown Dallas. Quite interesting, though a subplot was overly melodramatic. The final scene tries to tell us that the damage from such a massive storm hitting a major city like Dallas could take us years, maybe a generation, to clean up and rebuild.

DUH! Didn’t anyone watch the non-hypothetical “super-hurricane” hit New Orleans? Who knows how long that clean-up will take? But no one there is going to accept an estimate of a generation to rebuild. No way.

Disaster documentaries are notoriously weak on the logistics of disaster preparation and relief, often to the point of not even mentioning it. No wonder! When the disaster happens in real life, our leadership in agencies like FEMA isn’t well enough organized to cope.

Well, I guess I’m way off-topic so Soap box OFF