Originally Posted by
Owenc
But its only 3100 miles and heathrow made it. This is the first time i've seen a flight from Ireland divert for fuel.
EWR weather has been terrible the last two days. That means the flight plan needs an alternate airport with sufficient weather (inclusive of extra fuel to reach that alternate), as well as extra holding fuel. Plus the required 45 minutes (or whatever the number is) of fuel reserve you need when you land no matter what. Therefore, to be able to hold all that fuel, the 757-200 can either be payload restricted, or it can make a fuel stop somewhere en route.
While the winter jetstream and high altitude winds certainly is a huge factor, destination airport weather also plays a large part into the equation.
In the case of UA76 BFS-EWR today 1/4, it looks like they tried for EWR, were put into a hold (did one racetrack loop), and made the decision to divert to ALB because they were probably told by ATC that it would be a while due to the poor EWR weather.