livinloose

This is a first for me…I am on AS 1443, was supposed to be a direct flight from Cancun to Seattle - normally a 6 hour flight. They are using a 737-800. After we checked our bags in Cancun we were told the flight will be stopping in San Diego to refuel. Once we get on the airplane the pilot says that this aircraft is not certified to fly directly over the Gulf of Mexico, and that combined with strong winds are the reason we have to stop in San Diego to refuel and change the pilots out as they are timing out. I have a nine month old with me, and 6 hours was already pushing his limits, now this looks to be a 10 hour flight or longer. This seems incredibly egregious on Alaska’s part. What do you think reasonable compensation is for this?

flytoeat

Nothing.

rune87

Honestly. Nothing. You've got a couple strong storms moving across the country. Fuel diversions happen in the winter. Ultimately Alaska is still getting you to your final destination.

notquiteaff

Sorry for the inconvenience, but you probably have heard of the fleet being stretched super thin by the MAX9 grounding. If the aircraft you flew on wasn’t certified to fly over large bodies of water, perhaps it didn’t have rafts? On the bright side, you did get a plane instead of a cancellation email.

I don’t think AS owes you anything, and it certainly wasn’t “incredibly egregious”. Maybe send your request for compensation to Mr. Calhoun at Boeing.

StevenSeagalFan

Happens all the time, they stop for gas on a lot of flights.

AKLifetimeFlyer

Your compensation is not running out of fuel and making an unplanned “landing” in Yellowstone

anteater

I think Ben should step down until there can be a full investigation! Whoops, wrong thread. /s

🤙🏻🥃

notquiteaff

Since this is Flyertalk, did you get credit for CUN-SAN and SAN-SEA? Those extra 400 EQM could prove to be very valuable at the end of the year (or worthless, of course).

ashill

I assume what’s happening is that this flight would normally be operated by an ETOPS (which doesn't really stand for "Engines Turn or Passengers Swim") plane, which is certified to fly long stretches far from a diversion airport (typically over water). A large fraction of AS’s ETOPS fleet is the out-of-service 737-9 MAXes. They must be prioritizing the remaining ETOPS planes (which includes some but not all 737-800s) for Hawaii service which absolutely requires ETOPS. Instead of cancelling your flight, they put you on a non-ETOPS 737-800 which, with whatever the winds are today, can’t make it nonstop to SEA. Annoying but a lot better than a cancellation!

djp98374

it’s not…

it has happened in the past. Cross country flights needing to stop to refuel due to strong headwinds.

as the poster above said….there are aircraft restrictions on flying over large bodies of ocean water due to special safety/ tracking requirements. Not all aircraft can do that.

pilot time out is different. They should have known the pilots would have timed out. Thry routed you to San Diego because that is the closest airport with extra crew. It can’t do this in Dallas or denver because their service is too small to have extra crew there other than dumb luck. In longer term planning they could have flown a spare crew to a different airport like texas, NM, denver and dropped that crew off and then this crew came on to take over..but it is complex.

you could argue on getting more miles credit flown.

mtofell

There was a whole long thread on this recently if OP wants to search a bit.... I think I might have even started it so you can search my username. Mine was SEA>OGG and they stopped just down the road in PDX (ironically where I started that day). Yeah, it happens a lot with all the bad weather... .just a fact of life flying.

ashill

If the issue is that they can't fly over the middle of the Gulf of Mexico — borne out by the flight track — then DFW is quite a bit further out of the way than SAN and DEN looks close to a wash. PHX or LAS would have been a little more direct, but not enormously so. Seems to me like changing flight crew in SAN, where AS has the crews readily available, makes the most sense. If they only needed fuel they could have done it in PHX or something.

You wouldn't get more miles if it were scheduled as a one-stop direct flight through SAN.

PDXPremier

I actually don't mind stopping for fuel if I could get off the plane and stretch my legs a bit.

ashill

Would they let you do that on an international arrival? Presumably they cleared Customs in Seattle? Although if they took advantage of the fuel stop to get Customs done, as BA used to do on the LCY-JFK via SNN flights, there are worse things. The plane was at the gate at SAN for a bit less than an hour, which would be impressively quick to get an entire plane deplaned, through Customs, and reboarded.

Hipplewm

I would think stopping for gas would be a high priority item for you - to me it seems like the better option to running out of gas at 35,000ft.

Compensation is you bought a ticket and they are getting you from point A to point B - if they fail to get you to Point B - come back and we can diagnose the issues. If you were in Europe, with extremely strong laws to protect passengers you would still be due nothing because of high winds. Sending a non etops plane may get you out of it, but if that plane could make it wqithout the winds then you would definitely get Zero there as well.