My office at work lies squarely under the path of the turnout at KSMF for the DUDES9 and FROGO6 departures. As I’m heading out for lunch, I heard engine rumble too loud to be the old sickly Mad Dogs that AAL flies. I look up, and see a B744 on its climb out.
Nothing listed as it being a diversion, and all other metal for the scheduled leg (EHAM-KSFO) is with B772s. So I have no idea why they went with a B744 for this run, let alone why it landed here. I also see nothing as far as a scheduled flight to here in a B744, from KLM or otherwise, let alone a diversion…
Departure
Departure Status Details
Airport: (AMS) Amsterdam-Schiphol Airport
City: Amsterdam, NL
Scheduled: 09:50 - Wed 14-Sep-2011
Actual: 10:01 - Wed 14-Sep-2011
Departed gate 11 min later than scheduled
Local Time: 20:41 - Thu 15-Sep-2011
Arrival
Arrival Status Details
Airport: (SFO) SFO International Airport
City: San Francisco, CA, US
Scheduled: 11:50 - Wed 14-Sep-2011
Actual: 13:44 - Wed 14-Sep-2011
Arrived at gate 114 min later than scheduled
Terminal: I
Local Time: 11:41 - Thu 15-Sep-2011
My guess is that it was a 744, diverted to SMF for some reason accounting for the 1hr 43 min delay. How else do you lose that much time on a direct flight ?
I can’t explain FA’s version of the flight, unless it’s another “estimate” .
Flight 281 clearly diverted to SMF, but the FAA never send us (or the coughcompetition) any notice about it so we left the destination as SFO. We then picked up the short hop from SMF to SFO.
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