I have one question for anyone who can answer. Why are they going all the way to Oklahoma to dodge this storm system. Why not just fly a few miles north and be in the clear?
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/BTA6102
One guess, if you look at the northern end of the line it is nice and round which tells me that is the end of the radar return, not necessarily the end of the line. I looked at a satellite picture and it looks like the line widens out and goes all the way to Hudson Bay.
Here is the permalink to the flight in question: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/BTA6102/history/20110531/0325Z/KMSP/KFAR
Why would you not just delay the flight until the storm passes? You’re already delaying the arrival time by going all the way south and then back up again.
Maybe they didn’t want to fly into Canadian airspace? If they had to divert and land in Canada, it would be a nightmare or the pax who probably weren’t carrying passports?
Just a guess.
They get paid by the flight hour. It was an excuse to make a few more $$
Yeah, but they had an “on time departure”. Seriously.
I fly over Canada all time on domestic US flights and the pilot doesn’t divert (though, on a barely related note, Canada within 200? miles of the US border is domestic for US tax purposes… AFAIK).
The flight had already diverted to MSP (note that the original routing was ORD-FAR). If they would have sat in MSP for the rain to pass the crew would’ve probably gone over duty limits and they would’ve had to put everyone up in a hotel and try it again 12 hours later. This way they got the aircraft and crew to FAR only a few hours late.
I was on a similar flight to MCI at 10pm out of ATL. They took us to Chicago to avoid a line of storms. I was on Gogo inflight watching the flight live on Flightaware. I caught the pilot on the ground and asked about the interesting path. He said he was hoping to punch a hole West through the front but it never came so we had go all the way around.
I’m sure that pilot was thinking- Dmn the fact that we have internet on-board, and dmn the fact that you can track the flight on FA 