ESpen36

I'm currently at JFK T8 and am surprised to see a JFK-LGA segment (!!) on the departures board for 12pm, even more surprised that it is Flight 721, which all of us NYC-based AAers know is a morning LGA-DFW flight.

So, I did a little searching, and found that the aircraft took off from LGA as normal, encountered MX problems over PA, circled for a while, and then landed at JFK.

Two questions:

1) Why did the aircraft land at JFK instead of just going back to LGA? AA does not have many S80 flights at JFK, thus I suspect the mechanics are better equipped to handle S80s at LGA.

2) Why is the aircraft flying JFK-LGA? Assuming the load of pax is from the orignal LGA-DFW segment, why not just fly JFK-DFW and get there sooner?

Does anyone have any inside info here?

Thanks! (I often take AA 721, hence why I'm interested.)

viking737

It looks like the flight is now scheduled to fly nonstop JFK-DFW.
Most of the time if a flight takes off from LGA and encounters mechanical issues it is preferable to divert to JFK which has a lot longer runways
than the 7000ft available at LGA.

ESpen36

I just spoke with some pax on the flight. You are correct--they landed the aircraft at JFK because of the longer runways, since they didn't want to dump fuel and were too heavy to land at LGA.

Apparently the agents are not telling the pax anything, and the departure time "to LGA" is now jumping every few minutes from 11:45 to 12:30 to 1:00 and back to 11:45. It sounds like they are still assessing the situation to see if it is possible to fix the bird or whether they will need to cancel and reaccommodate.

Blumie

I am a NYC-based AA flyer, yet have opted not to memorize all of the flight numbers. Go figure.


I don't get it. Are you suggesting that this might be a routine diversion?

ESpen36

But certainly you would recognize the flight numbers of the flights you tend to take most often.

I think it is fun to memorize the "important" NYC area AA flights like NRT, EZE, GIG, GRU, LAX, as well as the ones I tend to take most often. Then, when I have a spare couple of moments on random days or while I await a flight, I'll just pull them up on EF and see how they are doing. Sometimes interesting things happen like diversions, RONs for the Deep South America flights, etc. I find it entertaining, and it educates me as well so that when I am on those flights I have a sense of the potential contingencies and how they might be handled by local management and FTWDP.



Who knows? I'm sure you would agree that in this day and age, anything is possible. As a result of following this incident, I now know that LGA-DFW flights needing to make an emergency landing are likely to go over to JFK because of the fuel weight. This information could be very important if one of my LGA-DFW flights this winter encounters the same situation. It is possible.

Blumie

Yeah, I guess we just have different definitions of "fun" and "entertaining."

dayone

If this is a plebiscite, I vote for your definition.

Life_Platinum

ESPN 36: Now if I could get you interested in airplane tail numbers, then I would come out to JFK and spot AA aircraft with you!!! Cool hobby though, and here I thought you spent all your time in the fall on AA flights to Europe.
Regards, LP

Short hair Francis

I was wondering that myself today when I was in the JFK Flagship, it was showing delayed til 3pm when I was there around.
I presume that i beat it to DFW today, I was on 1770.

All American Flyer

Come on, it's rude to belittle someone else's hobby.

sukn

And those who dare to enjoy in-flight meals.

FWAAA

MD-80s don't have that capability, regardless of their desire (or not) to dump fuel.

WChou

Imagine a hypothetical scenario where CX, JL, or SQ had to fly JFK-LGA. I bet the FAs could manage a full drink service in all cabins. Upon exiting the plane, the captain would personally apologize to everyone for not having time for a second run.