Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas yesterday!
My brother in-law was down in Los Angeles, California with his parents and siblings and decided to fly up to Oregon to spend New Years with us and my sister here in Salem and I ended up picking him up after getting off work. Better yet, since he was in the Los Angeles area, he ended up taking the new Avelo Airlines service between Burbank and Salem, which as you recall was inaugurated this past October! My brother in-law picked the two most convenient airports on the west coast to fly in and out of! Unfortunately for him, what should've been convenient a two hour flight ended up being a seven hour ordeal on the plane due to fog here in Salem, which brought visibility down to a half-mile and his flight ended up diverting.
Today's flight to and from Salem out of Burbank was one of those special extra Tuesday flights for the holiday season that should've been a mid-morning arrival (as the regularly-scheduled Burbank flights have since switched to evening flights on Thursdays and Sundays). However, due to half-mile visibility from the fog this morning, my brother in-law's flight ended up going missed after shooting an approach and the flight crew decided to divert to Redmond; from what I could tell, the visibility was below landing minimums for any of the instrument approaches Salem-McNary Field has. This of course, put a damper on things and I ended up sticking around the airport getting updates on this Avelo Airlines flight's status. In the end, I killed time by going out for lunch and working/helping on a few small projects at the club hangars until my brother in-law's flight eventually managed to get into Salem four hours later.
So while my brother in-law did pick two of the most convenient airports to fly in and out of on the west coast, he picked a pretty bad day to fly into Salem! And seven hours onboard a Boeing 737-700 is pretty brutal for domestic flight standards here in the U.S., so I can certainly empathize there. But from a pilot's perspective, it was standard operating procedures for the flight to divert to an alternate airport, a standard practice when flying IFR...
Salem (SLE)
Preview:
 |
| Avelo Airlines Boeing 737-752 (N705VL) arriving on 31 after shooting an ILS approach as VXP185 from Redmond after initially diverting from Burbank with my brother in-law on board. |
 |
| This flight should've touched down in Salem four hours earlier but ended up going missed after shooting an ILS approach and visibility was unfortunately down to half a mile. |
 |
| Using a combination of FlightRadar24, Foreflight, and my air band radio, I was able to track this flight rather religiously and quickly figure out what would end up happening. |
 |
| The reason why the flight ended up diverting to Redmond-Roberts Field out of any other potential alternate airport is because Redmond happens to be Avelo's largest outstation in Oregon; the airline currently provides flights to Burbank, Las Vegas, Santa Rosa, and Palm Springs out of Redmond. |
 |
| Thankfully, visibility increased and fog lifted enough several hours later for the flight to come in... |
 |
| VXP185 taxiing to the gate. Seven hours in a 737 for what should've been a simple two hour domestic flight is pretty brutal. As one aviation YouTuber would put it, "Weather is the great equalizer." |
 |
| While inconvenient for everyone else, the diversion was standard operating procedures for IFR flying. And this was still one of my easier (not to mention convenient!) airport runs I've done for someone! No hour drive to Portland or Eugene for me today! |
 |
| Scheduled to return to Burbank as VXP186 four hours late. I'm sure the outbound passengers were happy to see the plane finally arrive and they would soon be underway after getting delayed. Avelo needs to claim Salem as their next west coast hub and base some planes here fast! |
No comments:
Post a Comment