Originally Posted by
BearX220
Most likely explanation: a flight from DTW to a Canadian station was cancelled, or a significant number of pax missed it, so your flight is dropping them off en route to ANC.
I would concur...this is generally the case if it is a planned diversion. There were likely a significant number of passengers on a cancelled flight to Edmonton (oddly though, there are no DTW-YEG nonstop flights) and there were enough seats on the ANC flight to accomodate all or most of them. I am guessing, with the weather issues yesterday at MSP, there is a group stranded in DTW due to a cancelled DTW-MSP flight and this diversion will accomodate them.
If you see this reason on an
unplanned diversion, it is in 95% of the cases due to a medical emergency.
And, not to split hairs but the diversion is only adding about 40 minutes to the flight to ANC, the rest of the delay points back to DTW where the flight originated and was awaiting inbound crew. Total delay estimated at 1:15 from the original scheduled arrival time.