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)

 

[Princess Pia]

Was travelling to Paris on Ryanair (can’t remember which airport we were meant to be going to) and got diverted to Lille due to fog. Typical Ryanair chaos but buses were eventually provided to get us into Paris.

 

[luxury-lizard]

I guess all frequent travellers have a story to 2 to tell - here are a few for myself:

1. On my very first trip Down Under from Montreal Canada to Sydney in 1972 !! Itinerary was: YUL-ORD-LAX-HNL-AKL-SYD - after leaving ORD the flight diverted to Houston for a medical emergency - by the time we finally got to AKL we had to layover for 8+ hours (daytime), Air New Zealand put everyone in a hotel for the day. So well done.
2. In more recent years (say only 20 years ago) a flight from LAX to SYD had to divert to BNE due to low fuel (can't recall why but I think headwinds) - the "nice" thing United did was allow passengers whose final destination would have been BNE to disembark (they had to call in border control) but their luggage still went to SYD. Many passengers were confused as it was DLS and could not figure out why the reported time seemed to be off by an hour.

 

[markis10]

Got on the wrong Northwest jumbo at ITM after a flight from JFK that was heading to SYD. Ended up going back to JFK, on short final gear up flaps up and diverted to EWR, as the previous departure didn’t depart after reaching 14 ft of altitude.

TWA Flight 843 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Bundy Bear]

Adelaide to Brisbane on a 737-400 ending up going to Sunshine Coast Airport.

Landed about 9;30 after doing circles around the north of Brisbane due to storms, then we had to wait for the storm to cross over the sunshine coast then we ended up getting a bus back to Brisbane, left MCY just after midnight and arrived about 1:30am to Brisbane airport and arived home around 2:00am.

 

[elanshin]

Flew HND-SYD last year. Bad storm over SYD saw us circling then eventually head off to CBR. Pretty funny once we got on the ground thqt the captain authorised all those that needed to go to the toilet to go (as we weren't parked) because he had to go too.

Eventually made it back to SYD just before midnight after picking up some fuel.