itfcfan

My brother is flying in from LAX to HKG on CX897 and it's been diverted to Macau, seemingly due to bad weather over HKG.

Does anyone know the standard procedure when this happens? (I assume its not an infrequent occurrence due to stormy weather over HKG sometimes). I don't know if the weather threshold for ferries is higher? Is the most likely event to wait for better weather and resume the flight later? Or water/road transport to HKG?

Thanks in advance for any previous experience.

John

QRC3288

That sucks. Yea, thunderstorms currently in HKG. My guess is fuel wasn't abundant, and perhaps a decision was made to go to an alternate instead of circling for 30-60 minutes along with no doubt a ton of other aircraft.

Ferries are running right fine to Macau right now. Unless it's severe winds or fog, usually the ferries go without a hitch.

I'm not sure exactly what CX will do here. A few weeks ago, CX diverted a plane to Shenzhen for something similar. They had the plane back in the air within 2 hours and it ended up landing in HKG 4 hours late. My bet is they'll try to get it airborne again asap.

itfcfan

Thanks QRC.

Apparently the crew are due to timeout soon, but if paperwork can be completed in the next 30mins, they'll take-off and hop over to HKG.

I had a look on a plane finder app and didn't see any other planes diverting to Macau. But I agree - I think it was probably a combination of lots of planes circling and a lack of fuel remaining which led to the decision to divert.

No information on what happens if they don't get off the ground in 30mins. Hopefully it's move to the ferry, rather than wait for another plane/crew to fly over to take them back (purely from a time / waiting on plane perspective!).

itfcfan

Just for info - the plane just landed back in HKG - about 2 hours after diverting to Macau.

SLGO

Right, so they did try taking off asap. Not surprised as I doubt if CX has any support in MFM. Would be chaotic if they try to let pax off there.

Chromie25

I wonder how long the flight from MFM to HKG took .

SilverChris

"Cabin crew, be seated for takeoff"

"Cabin crew, 3 minutes to landing"

sxc

I wonder if they have to do the safety demo again if they haven't opened the doors.

boybi

and at what FL did it fly?

boybi

Checked FR24, it flew at 6,250ft, with flight time of 20min.

Chromie25

Thanks! The shortest flight I ever had was IAD - BWI; flight time of 10 mins. This was pre-911 and it was a regional jet, the captain didn't bother to close the cockpit door and was cracking jokes the whole time ("enjoy our hospitality!").

MSPeconomist

What's the distance in airmiles?

I've flown between OAK and SFO, even on wide body aircraft. It was scheduled as a ten minute flight. Fun!

QRC3288

The distance from Macau to Central Hong Kong is about 40 miles. However, the HK Airport is closer - approximately 20 miles east of Macau as the crow flies to the western tip of the HKG runways. It is close, but indeed farther than OAK and SFO.

FWIW, in terms of the crow flying SFO to OAK is even <10 miles. I think it's something like 5-7.

ermen

Can the airplane pilot actually declare a pan-pan (low fuel) to get priority landing status?

QRC3288

I highly, highly doubt it was a critical situation. I'm no pilot...but I do know is that MFM is always one of the alternates if you're flying to HKG. I can't imagine it's the rules of the road for guys to start declaring things in order to get priority landing, instead of diverting to an alternate, when all the other planes in the sky are facing similar issues. Not to mention those are other CX planes circling.

Hopefully one of the pilots on here can enlighten me. My guess is, you're not supposed to be cutting the line and declaring emergency or pan or whatever simply because you don't want to go to an alternate.

I really have no idea how it works. Is that CX's decision? Did ATC or someone tell CX they need to divert a few planes to clear up the backlog? Or perhaps ATC couldn't clearly tell the CX plane how long he would have to loiter for, but MFM was clear immediately....and if the weather didn't clear up, maybe the pilot would be facing a diversion to SZX, CAN or TPE which is definitely more inconvenient? Perhaps in this situation the pilot guesses (correctly) MFM will only mean a final delay of 1-2 hours, whereas the other alternatives if he waits around could be worse. Would be curious if someone has info. But I'd be willing to bet good money it wasn't an emergency situation.