Originally Posted by
Duckouttahere
Next Friday for me out of OAK. I will be sure to check the weather report next week. How much difference does flying out of OAK save compared to SEA and ANC in terms of distance, fuel load etc?
OAK makes a big difference. AS sometimes will fly SEA-OAK-Hawaii to get out of the winds. The only time you'll have an issue out of OAK is if there's a 175-200 kt jet pointed at Northern CA. Then the same situation would apply, start pulling off people and bags. OAK-HNL is actually the shortest distance between the two points. This is why most ferry flights of GA planes (i.e. Cessnas) leave from OAK.
Originally Posted by
robsaw
Westjet has at times done a fuel stop in various US west coast cities on their YVR-Hawaii routes due to headwinds. The strong headwinds can mess-up the schedule all on their own, so not sure how much worse a fuel diversion is given the bad PR off-loaded bags/passengers causes.
I saw them in Portland the other day when I landed there.
For those that say "50 bags" is an arbitrary number: it's not. Each bag has an average weight, as does each passenger. I think adults are 190 lbs. So removing 6 people saves you 6x190 or 1,140 lbs. Bags are probably in the 30-40 lbs range, so you end up getting a lot of weight off. Dispatch and the pilots would be doing this via phone, so that's why the number changed. Obviously, this is a situation that you want to avoid, but sometimes you have no choice. Remember, with ETOPS flights you need to have enough gas to fly from your ETP (halfway point), at 10,000 feet. So pulling out an extra 3,000 lbs gives you more space for gas. This probably happens a dozen or so times a year out of SEA.