Have you been on a flight that diverted?

[Mattg]

Have you boarded a flight and then landed at an airport that wasn't the intended destination?

I had a diversion about a decade ago on a domestic flight in Brazil. Took off from CGH bound for CNF, but after circling over Belo Horizonte for some time and being unable to land due to the weather, we ended up returning to Sao Paulo. Ultimately we didn't have enough fuel to make it all the way back to Sao Paulo though, so we diverted to Viracopos.

(From there, unfortunately the airline handled the situation really poorly. After a long wait and no communication, wee ended up getting put on buses - first back to CGH, and then to Belo Horizonte.)

Interestingly, I was crediting this flight to QFF and it credited to my Qantas account as a CGH-VCP flight, which short-changed me a bit. A missing points claim fixed that.

I've also had a Qantas SYD-AKL flight return to SYD after take-off due to a bird strike. That was handled much better - Qantas gave us some meal vouchers, found a new plane and we departed again a couple of hours later.

If you have a diversion tale, this thread is the place to tell it!

 

[AuSammy]

At the conclusion of a conference on a Friday night I was due to fly AN BNE-SYD-ADL.

Took off ok but SYD closed due to weather and we diverted to MEL.

On arrival in MEL we were told we couldn’t make ADL that night due to curfew.

Unfortunately a heap in International flights had diverted to MEL earlier than us because SYD was closed and they had already taken all the city and surrounding hotel rooms.

We were bundled onto a mini bus organised by the airline and ended up in some small country town I don’t recall. The motel owner got a local restaurant to reopen as we hadn’t eaten for many hours and the bill was sent to the airline.

The problem to get us to ADL was the grand prix was on and we were told they would do the best they can to find seats for us but no promises.

In the end all was ok. The mini bus took back to the airport and on arrival I was given a J seat to ADL and some money, cant recall how much, to compensate for any necessities we may have needed to buy due to delay. (Probably all helped by my GW Diamond status)