As the article points out:
> causes for flight diversions can range from medical (related to crew and passengers), weather (unlikely), unruly activity (we would have heard about that), and mechanical (the most likely). Someone even mentioned solar flares.
But none seem to be the case with these diversions, from what is publicly known.
Why would you say none of those reasons seem to be the case? We literally don't know, and there's not really any other reason (that's reasonably possible) other than those three.
I may have overstated my case there. Absence of evidence != evidence of absence, after all. Curious to see what the HN community makes of this though. Maybe it's a nothingburger.
Medical diversions (a passenger gets too sick) are by far the most common type. I find this interesting how the planes are so much more reliable than the passengers on board.
Yeah, many activities trigger it (the pilot will be expecting it coming out of autopilot, if he hears it at cruise because autopilot disengaged they'll investigate).
Well the people don't get regular maintenance and inspections before every flight where the planes do for starters. It'd be concerning if a random group of a few hundred people were more reliably well than a given mechanical system their lives depend on.
There are also a hundred or more passengers on a transpacific flight. If planes and humans were equally reliable, we'd expect to see medical diversions to outnumber mechanical ones by more than 100:1....
Another reason is to keep passengers occupied. Keep'em fiddling with stuff and it keeps them out of the hair of the flight crew.
Trying to fit an airline meal into the terribly limited space of an airline tray, and unwrap things that need unwrapping, and keep the trash under control, and find places for the small things they include that you don't even eat or need - and still manage to partake of the comestibles - this requires skills in spatial management that for some may lead to an unrewarding career in solving infernal Chinese wooden puzzles.
"Apparently there was an airline that managed to save tens of thousands of dollars per year by removing a single olive from the salads in their meals, because it was hardly noticed by customers it was a massive win, tens of thousands of dollars without anyone noticing.
By quite a bit, right? Assuming passenger malfunctions were statistically independent, I guess passenger malfunctions would follow the binomial distribution.
Any one malfunctioning passenger is sufficient to fail the overall flight. Assume each is independently probable of malfunction. If we know nothing else about the passengers, we can only model them as having some average rate of successful flight without malfunction, say 99.9%.
Say there are 100 passengers. We roll the dice 100 times, once for each passenger.
The success rate for the overall flight would be 0.999 ^ 100 = 90.4% -> About a 10% chance of flight failure.
If there are 400 passengers, we get 67.0%, about a 33% chance of flight failure.
Given enough passengers per flight, few or no flights reach their destination.
As others have pointed out, redundancy. Consider rather the likelihood of say 3 of 3 passengers falling ill - it's basically zero. (unless, as someone else pointed out, they all had the fish).
Once I was too tired on a long journey and made a rude comment when TSA was checking my green card for the third time in a 50 meter line. At that time my green card was expired for reasons outside my control so I also needed to carry some letters from DHS explaining why my green card was expired and that it was not my fault and I should be let back in.
Anyway, after the rude comment she just smirked and wrote XXX or something like that on my boarding card. I was like whatever, but when I got to the line at the gate and they checked my boarding card I got taken into a run for a "special" inspection. So unless you love body cavity searches don't be stupid and say things you are going to regret to TSA agents.
You're lucky that it was only hand written. Some people get that printed on their boarding pass which means it will pretty much always happen to them.
I had a special sticker placed in my passport by Australia because I left my passport laying on the counter while having work gear inspected and paperwork. Didn't realize it until attempting to check in, and then left all of the gear with my coworker while I ran off to get the passport. When I returned with it, the official that was "helping" us with our gear placed the sticker in my passport. Everytime I returned to AU, I got the special screening minus cavity searches. It was my own damn fault, and I was never rude to anyone about it, but yeah, I probably did look a bit shady running off after leaving a stack of large pelican cases. Oh well, that passport has now expired and the new one is sticker free.
I would expect immigration and customs to check the green card. Immigration has never checked my boarding pass for what would be a potential onward flight.
TSA would be at different area in the airport.
I was on Sydney to LA and we diverted to Hawaii because a passenger died and was taken off. I found it curious that they wouldn’t just wait until LA as the person died in the air so it’s not like they needed immediate attention.
We all stayed on board and we’re maybe down for 20 minutes.
- respect for the dead: a person has just passed on. Many people want at least the illusion of deceased people being at rest, and would think it's undignified to bring the body all the way to the destination when it could be allowed to be taken off and "rest".
and
- the comfort of surrounding passengers: there's not a lot of free space on a passenger plane. I don't know if there are any procedures for moving a body to someplace more convenient to the other passengers, but doing so would kind of fly in the face of the previous point.
LiveATC has archives of air traffic control comms in many places, it's possible that these flights are included. If we know the exact time, it might be possible for someone dedicated enough to check and see what the reported reason was.
If it's not a mechanical emergency (or even a caution) ATC often won't be informed; only if they need emergency equipment to meet, need priority, or have a security issue.
In other words if it's an airline policy diversion ATC may just see a plane requesting deviation from flight path.
It's usually hard to say. If you're going to do a diversion while flying across the pacific, you're probably going to go to Hawaii regardless of the reason.
And chaos theory says that there will occasionally be groupings of otherwise random events.
I think you're probably right. The dynamics I was thinking of within Chaos Theory relate more to interdependence between instances instead of random coincidence.
Why not geopolitical? It's entirely possible that the US military is conducting surprise exercises/weapons tests in the northern Pacific that they gently request diversions away from, though I bet it's more likely to be spare parts supply chain crunches that are nudging airlines to stretch their metal thin (literally)
Note that four of the five not-definitely-known-to-be-mechanical incidents transmitted either to or from San Diego, where a lot of navy exercises start from (the shown flight track diverts near where the navy reported harassment from a mystery drone swarm). Would probably be neat to see if they lined up in time and see if there are any other flights that transmitted around then to immediately kill the hypothesis.
5 of them occured within one week, which is an uncommonly high rate of occurrence.
There is quite possibly no connection other than coincidence -- 2 of the 7 we're mechanical problems, after all -- but there may be some connection. For example, wind conditions could have been very unfavorable, putting the smaller aircraft closer to their range limits, exacerbating any other problems by reducing fuel margin.
Hawaii is also pretty isolated geographically but has good infrastructure. If aircraft over the Pacific have issues, it's reasonable to expect them to go there.
a change in the scheduled stops (intentionally) would be a reroute or flagstop; a diversion is when you aren't planning to stop somewhere else but have to, because reasons.
analogies:
flagstop : on the way to Walmart you decide to stop at CVS on the way for something you remembered.
diversion: on the way to Walmart you start to loose bowel control and pull into the nearest Burger King to use their w/c.
Diversion is pilot jargon in this case. For example, ATC (air traffic control) might tell a pilot to divert to Chicago O'Hare if they can't land in Minneapolis.
Other articles on the site point out that unexpectedly strong headwinds can cause the aircraft to need to return to refuel, and that some aircraft actually need to dump fuel before they can return to get the additional fuel.
> longest stretch of ocean without diversions in the world.
TIL.
From the linked article, you could be 3 hours away from a diversion when you are flying to Hawaii.
Thus, there is probably a lower threshold to divert, than say if you were flying trans-continental over the US where there are a lot of diversion options all along the route.
This direct flight is probably the longest as you're pretty much over the Pacific from minutes after takeoff to minutes prior to landing. Hawaii is close to equidistant from either end (3800 to 4400 km).
If you can make it 2/3 of the way, Kiribati and Atuona Airport on Hiva Oa [1] look viable. If you can’t do that, I guess Kona/Hilo or Cabo are your “cross your fingers and pray” airports
Seems like ETOPS-330 and above is Santiago-Sydney and Auckland-Buenos Aires. These routes sound technically interesting but not especially fun for passengers. 17+ hours entirely over water.
Last year in June, my Hawaiian airlines flight leaving Honolulu turned back after 30 minutes into the flight.
No explanation was given, but they put us on a different plane about 3 hours later. But the experience was terrifying to be honest, when the pilot says we are turning around, and there are only miles of ocean in all directions.
People are typically scared of the plane falling out of the sky, right? If it helps at all, planes can still glide really really far with no engines. Not that that would happen.
another thing that sometimes reassures people is (ironically) watching those airplane disaster documentaries, e.g. on YouTube - you can see that planes are actually really robust, and lots of stuff has to go wrong at the same time before it's a real emergency, and how rare some of that stuff is. Mentour Pilot is an actual pilot who does accident documentaries sometimes.
Well. Actually. They fly routes that keeps the within a single-engine distance to an airport as much as possible. (ETOPs) Gliding should even at least get you fairly close to land, if not to land.
I used to agree, until I found out about Alaska Airlines Flight 261. I'm not sure what fail-safes are built into current Boeing and Airbus planes, but having the horizontal stabilizers malfunction is my new worst case scenario when flying now.
Agreed. I did not get a license (thanks to getting married, getting old, having kids and stuff), however taking flying lessons was the best thing I ever did for myself. Planes want to stay in the air. They don't just crash.
> As you know, causes for flight diversions can range from medical (related to crew and passengers), weather (unlikely), unruly activity (we would have heard about that)
Honest question, not expressing an opinion: for "unruly activity" how would you have heard?
I was on a SFO-Toronto flight, and it diverted to Denver because a passenger got unruly & they had him taken off & arrested. Would this have appeared anywhere online?
I think if you follow the ATC repost YouTubers, you have a pretty good chance of hearing about it. People are monitoring ATC 24/7 looking for something interesting to post.
I was flying Aero Mexico Cabo to LA in the early 2000s and the plane took steep bank to the right and then to the left before turning around 30 minutes into the flight.
They kept the passengers onboard after landing while we watched the plane being fueled up before it took off again.
Apparently, someone forgot to fuel up the plane before takeoff AND the pilots missed it on their checklist. Last time I flew Aero Mexico.
If it helps, in Europe (and with flights from Europe say to Toronto) the main cause for diversions are unruly passengers and technical issues.
Both are on a slight rise post covid
109 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadBut none seem to be the case with these diversions, from what is publicly known.
https://avherald.com/h?article=4fc19a3b&opt=0 https://avherald.com/h?article=4fcfe330&opt=0
We just continued undisturbed and landed as we should. I'm sure the plane went to technical hangar, tho.
Fed and watered customers are less likely to get ill and less likely to get unruly.
Trying to fit an airline meal into the terribly limited space of an airline tray, and unwrap things that need unwrapping, and keep the trash under control, and find places for the small things they include that you don't even eat or need - and still manage to partake of the comestibles - this requires skills in spatial management that for some may lead to an unrewarding career in solving infernal Chinese wooden puzzles.
"Apparently there was an airline that managed to save tens of thousands of dollars per year by removing a single olive from the salads in their meals, because it was hardly noticed by customers it was a massive win, tens of thousands of dollars without anyone noticing.
How true is this story?"
Surely one of the great comedies.
Say there are 100 passengers. We roll the dice 100 times, once for each passenger.
The success rate for the overall flight would be 0.999 ^ 100 = 90.4% -> About a 10% chance of flight failure.
If there are 400 passengers, we get 67.0%, about a 33% chance of flight failure.
Given enough passengers per flight, few or no flights reach their destination.
Anyway, after the rude comment she just smirked and wrote XXX or something like that on my boarding card. I was like whatever, but when I got to the line at the gate and they checked my boarding card I got taken into a run for a "special" inspection. So unless you love body cavity searches don't be stupid and say things you are going to regret to TSA agents.
You're lucky that it was only hand written. Some people get that printed on their boarding pass which means it will pretty much always happen to them.
I had a special sticker placed in my passport by Australia because I left my passport laying on the counter while having work gear inspected and paperwork. Didn't realize it until attempting to check in, and then left all of the gear with my coworker while I ran off to get the passport. When I returned with it, the official that was "helping" us with our gear placed the sticker in my passport. Everytime I returned to AU, I got the special screening minus cavity searches. It was my own damn fault, and I was never rude to anyone about it, but yeah, I probably did look a bit shady running off after leaving a stack of large pelican cases. Oh well, that passport has now expired and the new one is sticker free.
I would expect immigration and customs to check the green card. Immigration has never checked my boarding pass for what would be a potential onward flight. TSA would be at different area in the airport.
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification
We all stayed on board and we’re maybe down for 20 minutes.
- respect for the dead: a person has just passed on. Many people want at least the illusion of deceased people being at rest, and would think it's undignified to bring the body all the way to the destination when it could be allowed to be taken off and "rest".
and
- the comfort of surrounding passengers: there's not a lot of free space on a passenger plane. I don't know if there are any procedures for moving a body to someplace more convenient to the other passengers, but doing so would kind of fly in the face of the previous point.
In other words if it's an airline policy diversion ATC may just see a plane requesting deviation from flight path.
And chaos theory says that there will occasionally be groupings of otherwise random events.
7 flight diversions over 3 weeks doesn't sound like some type of natural disaster or geopolitical conflict to me.
Not that I know anything. Genuinely curious.
Note that four of the five not-definitely-known-to-be-mechanical incidents transmitted either to or from San Diego, where a lot of navy exercises start from (the shown flight track diverts near where the navy reported harassment from a mystery drone swarm). Would probably be neat to see if they lined up in time and see if there are any other flights that transmitted around then to immediately kill the hypothesis.
There is quite possibly no connection other than coincidence -- 2 of the 7 we're mechanical problems, after all -- but there may be some connection. For example, wind conditions could have been very unfavorable, putting the smaller aircraft closer to their range limits, exacerbating any other problems by reducing fuel margin.
analogies:
flagstop : on the way to Walmart you decide to stop at CVS on the way for something you remembered.
diversion: on the way to Walmart you start to loose bowel control and pull into the nearest Burger King to use their w/c.
HTH
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/gh/news/article/stronger-j...
TIL.
From the linked article, you could be 3 hours away from a diversion when you are flying to Hawaii.
Thus, there is probably a lower threshold to divert, than say if you were flying trans-continental over the US where there are a lot of diversion options all along the route.
I'm pretty sure this is wrong. LAX - Papetee is 8 hours and the only island that could break it up is probably Hawaii.
Not to mention Auckland->Santiago or Perth -> Jakarta.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atuona_Airport
I'm missing out.
I knew there's a Santiago->South Pole. That I did know.
By eyeball, there’s only a short segment where Hawaii is closer than LAX or PPT/RAR.
Kiribati might be an option but I don’t know if they have a runway sized for a 767.
Seems like ETOPS-330 and above is Santiago-Sydney and Auckland-Buenos Aires. These routes sound technically interesting but not especially fun for passengers. 17+ hours entirely over water.
No explanation was given, but they put us on a different plane about 3 hours later. But the experience was terrifying to be honest, when the pilot says we are turning around, and there are only miles of ocean in all directions.
another thing that sometimes reassures people is (ironically) watching those airplane disaster documentaries, e.g. on YouTube - you can see that planes are actually really robust, and lots of stuff has to go wrong at the same time before it's a real emergency, and how rare some of that stuff is. Mentour Pilot is an actual pilot who does accident documentaries sometimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236
Honest question, not expressing an opinion: for "unruly activity" how would you have heard?
I was on a SFO-Toronto flight, and it diverted to Denver because a passenger got unruly & they had him taken off & arrested. Would this have appeared anywhere online?
https://avherald.com/ is also pretty thorough in terms of breadth.
They kept the passengers onboard after landing while we watched the plane being fueled up before it took off again.
Apparently, someone forgot to fuel up the plane before takeoff AND the pilots missed it on their checklist. Last time I flew Aero Mexico.