I was on UA 883 that was scheduled to fly from LHR to EWR. About two hours before scheduled landing, the pilot announced that one of the flight attendants was ill and we needed to divert and land in BOS rather than EWR. We then flew another hour to BOS. In Boston, everyone had to deplane, go through immigration and customs and then be rebooked to their final destination. What a mess!

What I don't understand is that if the flight attendant was ill, why didn't we land earlier in Gander or Halifax rather than flying an hour to Boston. And given how close Boston is to EWR (probably only an additional 20 minutes of flying time) why did they inconvenience all 167 passengers and bear the time and cost of rebooking rather than just fly the additional time to EWR? It just didn't make sense to me to fly to Boston.