Just curious---anyone know why CO33 was diverted today? It left Houston and was diverted to Amarillo (en route to Denver) but it took almost 2.5 hours to get to Amarillo. What happened?

Dunno why, but it looks like they circled a bit before deciding to head to AMA.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/C...929Z/KIAH/KDEN

odd, and way closer to Denver than AMA at one point too.

Fuel burn or cockpit attempt to fix what was bothering them, most likely.

Interesting that they were much closer to COS yet headed to AMA. Wonder if it's because of that 13,000+ ft runway at AMA.

We also had some bada$$ storms this afternoon.

Continental used to send a lot of planes to AMA for maintenance, including 753s. [There used to be a lot of 99xx flights in and out of there; but no more in recent months.] Perhaps they still have contract or working relationships with the hangars there.

I bet it was weather related as we had some nasty storms roll of the Front Range around 2:00PM and head east-southeast. I suspect there was no easy way to route them around the storms and put them into the flow of all the flights coming from the west.

I would imagine it was a weather divert.... Looks like they held waiting to get into DEN and at some point hit the fuel trigger which required them to go somewhere else. There is a continuation of 33 tonight out of AMA and up to DEN which goes along the backside of that weather.

Sometimes the diverts don't make too much sense to others (why not COS, etc.), but the dispatchers and crew come up with a game plan that satisfies all of the requirements for satisfactory weather forecast, fuel burn, handling capabilities (widebody, Customs, etc.), and then make it happen.

DRW

Ramp space could be another factor. No place to park the plane then no reason to land.

While technically true, I don't think that DEN could really run completely out of ramp space. I mean, park the plane on the edge and use airstairs if you have to.

No, but COS or AMA could if they are unable to land at DEN. (Which is what the thread is discussing)

Did nobody notice the epic delay to the originating sector for CO33/14th July -

I've wondered about flights like CO33. I think they are operated by two different airplanes. What's that for?

Marketing. If you search for LON-DEN in a legacy GDS you'll see the true non-stop flights (BA, maybe UA if they are still running it but I don't remember) and then you see the "direct" flights and then you see connections. And in the good old days the vast majority of direct flights were operated by the same aircraft.

Then the airlines discovered that there was no reason to have the same plane fly the two (or three) parts of a direct flight. They'd still get the priority listing on the GDS so the flights would be more likely to sell to customers but they wouldn't have to worry about flying a 777 between DEN and IAH. Of course that also introduced the chance for customers ticketed on a "direct" flight to actually miss their connection. It is misleading and generally a pretty crappy move by the airlines but they continue to do it.

Oh, and they only give FF miles based on the origin/destination, not on the actual connections. That's really craptacular of them. That can be 10-15% fewer miles in the most extreme cases (e.g. SAT-IAH-NRT-GUM, EZE-IAH-EWR-EZE).

Before CO closed DEN as a hub 33 used to be a non-stop LGW-DEN on a DC-10. The flight number has stayed the same, but the routing (obviously) is different. CO32 or 34 was the DEN-LGW leg.