Delta 201 diversion

[Hogpatrol]

Crew change or short on fuel? Delta 201 from Joburg lands in Boston. A new chapter in today's unreliable flying. My money is on a shortage of the required reserve.

Plane from South Africa makes stop at Boston's Logan Airport on way to Atlanta

The stop comes just one day before new U.S. regulations on flights from South Africa and seven other countries go into effect.

www.wcvb.com

 

[Bonk]

Could be anything but it's probably not because of crew. Because of the length of the flight there's a relief crew on board so crew rest and duty limitations are almost certainly not an issue. In all likelihood if it was fuel related they knew before they departed that fuel was tight and they already had Boston programmed as an enroute alternate.

There's a dispatch procedure where a flight can dispatch to an intermediate destination (in this case Boston) and upon approaching the intermediate destination the crew (in conjunction with their dispatchers) can reevaluate the fuel state to see if they can continue to the real destination (Atlanta). Unless there's some sort of other issue this is probably what happened. It's more prevalent westbound in the winter when the jet stream causes higher than usual headwinds. On the upside, east bound flights get where they're going a lot quicker.

 

[slam8031]

I guess I’m missing something! Delta 201 is direct from jnb to Atlanta. Having flown this route it comes in to atl over Florida. How is it anywhere near Boston as an intermediate stop?

 

[WAB]

I guess I’m missing something! Delta 201 is direct from jnb to Atlanta. Having flown this route it comes in to atl over Florida. How is it anywhere near Boston as an intermediate stop?

I’ve flown this route quite a number of times and have seen them take wildly different routings. I assumed that it was due to weather/headwinds.

 

[BourbonTrail]

"This has to do with technical specifications of our A350 aircraft and the payload of this particular flight," reads a statement from the spokesperson. "Customers onboard have been made aware of the stop and we apologize for any inconvenience to their travel plans.”

This is the key statement. There were items (or people) on board that were destined for Boston from RSA. They needed an A350 to move the payload…so probably a highly specific planned in advance re-route. The crew swap is either due to the crew following the payload or a crew with special skillset/certifications.

 

[fourfive8]

That is one heckuva disruption for the passengers due to "aircraft specs and payload". Boston is 400 miles farther from JNB than Atlanta. What... like the A350 literally has to run on fumes to make the flight from JNB to ATL even under normal circumstances, there was a miscalculation and/or the flight left JNB overloaded? "Customers on board HAVE BEEN made aware" Ya think! Seems odd. Good grief! Might be more to the story.

 

[Hogpatrol]

I guess I’m missing something! Delta 201 is direct from jnb to Atlanta. Having flown this route it comes in to atl over Florida. How is it anywhere near Boston as an intermediate stop?

As posted above, Boston was the filed alternate and it's closer than Atlanta.

 

[fourfive8]

As posted above, Boston was the filed alternate and it's closer than Atlanta.

Yep, correct. Interesting in that I looked it up using different search parameters and got a few different results- with most showing Boston indeed closer that Atlanta. Could depend on different pre-determined flight paths or routes.

 

[Bonk]

Contrary to popular belief not all airplanes can fill the seats, fill the tanks and go. There are a lot of factors involved. If the payload (passengers, bags & freight/cargo) is too much they have to limit how much fuel is carried. Obviously they'll limit payload to make sure there's enough fuel on board to safely get where they're going but, within clearly defined legal requirements, airlines routinely cut the equation pretty fine. First of all even if there is room for more fuel it costs money to haul excess fuel around. They won't put anymore in the tanks than they have to meet the operational requirement and the legal requirements. Airplanes are designed to carry full fuel, fill the seats and carry luggage. The weight of the empty aircraft is known and passenger and bags weights are based on industry accepted standard weights. The variables are fuel load and how much freight/cargo is on board.

Here's another tidbit most passengers don't know: cargo pays better than people. If the overall payload is too much most airlines will leave people behind before they offload cargo. In the same vein your bags didn't get 'lost'. They were intentionally left behind to accommodate the overall payload. The logic is while people don't enjoy waiting for their luggage to catch up they really don't like it when they don't get where they're going. Get the people there and get their luggage to them as soon as possible. When was the last time you heard about someone's luggage actually being really lost? As in they never found it. Almost all the time the airline knows exactly where your luggage is. They just didn't put it on the plane you were on because it made more sense for the airline to send it on a later flight. You didn't hear that from me.

Remember, the flight is dispatched based on known current enroute weather conditions and forecast weather conditions at the destination at the time of arrival. Over the course of a long flight a lot can happen that wasn't anticipated. Weather changes. Winds change. If they have to fly lower to avoid turbulence that burns more fuel. They might have to deviate around some unanticipated weather. The crew and dispatchers do their very best to factor all this into a flight plan including adding 'what if' enroute alternates. However, it's a flight PLAN and no plan survives contact with the enemy (Sun Tzu).

All my comments about luggage go out the window when you change airlines during an international trip. Especially if the airline change is not in the same country of your actual destination. That's almost a guarantee your luggage will end up in luggage purgatory. In these cases your luggage is truly lost. Good luck getting it back.

 

[fourfive8]

Seems there have been 2 such diversions in the recent past- one to Puerto Rico and one to Boston. The stated excuses seem somewhat consistent and skirt (word smith) around the obvious which involves too little fuel/range and choosing to fly overloaded.

 

[fourfive8]

Doing a little more digging and IMO something is still not right with the story as released to the public. The flight tracker data for the diverted flight that ended up in Boston clearly shows a northerly path from the beginning of the flight out of JNB. Nearly a straight line that crossed the coast about mid-Angola, skirted the coastline of both Liberia and Sierra Leone before heading out across the open Atlantic. The flight tracker normal historic paths JNB to ATL have been angled much farther south and cross the coast anywhere between mid-Namibia to upper Namibia before heading across the open Atlantic. Almost seems like the diversion to Boston was pre-planned in the program from the very beginning of the flight.

The flight tracker path for the Puerto Rico diversion of the Atlanta flight is nearly along the same path as a normal JNB to ATL flight so no indications of a deviation from the beginning of the flight out of JNB.

As an aside, I have payed close attention to the ATL to JNB Delta flight paths for several flights spanning several years and the normal flight path for the ATL to JNB inbound crosses the African coast usually somewhere mid-Namibia. It is daylight and usually easy to see coastal features that can be correlated to a map. Always interesting to see the red Namib desert sand changing to linear Kalahari dunes of red sand separated by vegetation zones transitioning into linear Kalahari dunes of gray sand separated by vegetation zones.... then finally blending to broken arid scrub farther inland all the way into the JNB area.

I'm not a conspiracy type, but this has smelled from the get go. Too much vague, gobbledygook language in the early official press release.

 

[Edster]

It’s all about the cargo! My trophy’s had to get to Beantown!!!!

 

[Buffalo1]

We could sit here and speculate forever without ever knowing the reason.
The plane did not crash- no lives were lost which is good news.

Folks, let's move on now !

 

[JimP]

But all they did in beantown was to dump some fuel in it and send it down to Atlanta

 

[fourfive8]

We could sit here and speculate forever without ever knowing the reason.
The plane did not crash- no lives were lost which is good news.

Folks, let's move on now !

Simple solution for ya- don't click on the thread

 

[Bonk]

Doing a little more digging and IMO something is still not right with the story as released to the public. The flight tracker data for the diverted flight that ended up in Boston clearly shows a northerly path from the beginning of the flight out of JNB. Nearly a straight line that crossed the coast about mid-Angola, skirted the coastline of both Liberia and Sierra Leone before heading out across the open Atlantic. The flight tracker normal historic paths JNB to ATL have been angled much farther south and cross the coast anywhere between mid-Namibia to upper Namibia before heading across the open Atlantic. Almost seems like the diversion to Boston was pre-planned in the program from the very beginning of the flight.

The flight tracker path for the Puerto Rico diversion of the Atlanta flight is nearly along the same path as a normal JNB to ATL flight so no indications of a deviation from the beginning of the flight out of JNB.

As an aside, I have payed close attention to the ATL to JNB Delta flight paths for several flights spanning several years and the normal flight path for the ATL to JNB inbound crosses the African coast usually somewhere mid-Namibia. It is daylight and usually easy to see coastal features that can be correlated to a map. Always interesting to see the red Namib desert sand changing to linear Kalahari dunes of red sand separated by vegetation zones transitioning into linear Kalahari dunes of gray sand separated by vegetation zones.... then finally blending to broken arid scrub farther inland all the way into the JNB area.

I'm not a conspiracy type, but this has smelled from the get go. Too much vague, gobbledygook language in the early official press release.

Brother, let it go. You're reading way too much unto this. Fuel stops for long flights are normal in the winter when flying westbound. When I say normal I don't mean they happen every day. I mean they're something that happens infrequently but they do happen and in the industry they're a non-event. They also happen in clusters because winds don't vary much day to day. If the weather pattern is such that especially strong headwinds are an issue they're usually an issue for a week to ten days because on a global scale or continental scale changes in weather happen slowly. It's not like your local weather that can drastically change in a few hours. It takes sometimes weeks for a pattern of strong headwinds to dissipate.

As far as routing goes no one ever flies a straight line from A to B. First of all the earth is a curved surface. On anything over a couple thousand miles a straight line is not the shortest distance. Second, weather and winds are everything when it comes to flight planning. We avoid ugly weather as much as possible and after that we take whichever route most favors economical fuel burn. For example, I routinely fly from the northeast to southern CA and during the winter I spend a lot of time in Canadian airspace. We usually don't turn south until we're well past Minneapolis. Why? Simple. The headwinds are less. The ground track is longer but we actually get there sooner than if we had headed straight for SoCal. In fact more times than not if we didn't take the route along the Canadian border we'd probably have to stop somewhere like Las Vegas or Denver for fuel. I've flown the same flights to SoCal via ATL too if the southern route yields a shorter flight time. That's why the JNB flight sometimes arrives from the north and sometimes arrives from the south.

Unlike a car an airliners fuel burn isn't measured in MPG. It's measured in fuel burn per hour. The less hours in flight the less fuel is burned. When fuel is a fixed number and fuel burn is a fixed number the flight time available is also a fixed number. Strong winds equal more time in flight. More time in flight equals more fuel burned and since fuel capacity is a fixed number you can only remain in the air for a fixed amount of time. Sometimes that isn't enough time to get you all the way to where you want to go. That's what's happening with this JNB-ATL flight.

 

[Hogpatrol]

^^^^^ This, your fuel gauge is your watch. ^^^^^

 

[Philip Glass]

I guess I’m missing something! Delta 201 is direct from jnb to Atlanta. Having flown this route it comes in to atl over Florida. How is it anywhere near Boston as an intermediate stop?

My question exactly!

 

[Bonk]

My question exactly!

One more time:

"As far as routing goes no one ever flies a straight line from A to B. First of all the earth is a curved surface. On anything over a couple thousand miles a straight line is not the shortest distance. Second, weather and winds are everything when it comes to flight planning. We avoid ugly weather as much as possible and after that we take whichever route most favors economical fuel burn. For example, I routinely fly from the northeast to southern CA and during the winter I spend a lot of time in Canadian airspace. We usually don't turn south until we're well past Minneapolis. Why? Simple. The headwinds are less. The ground track is longer but we actually get there sooner than if we had headed straight for SoCal. In fact more times than not if we didn't take the route along the Canadian border we'd probably have to stop somewhere like Las Vegas or Denver for fuel. I've flown the same flights to SoCal via ATL too if the southern route yields a shorter flight time. That's why the JNB flight sometimes arrives from the north and sometimes arrives from the south."

 

[Philip Glass]

But there is one thing missing from this post. It is the fact that we would not be having this conversation if Delta had not quit the Boeing 777.