DL 66 ATL-ZRH Diverted to Halifax
 

I noticed on Flightradar24 that the flight today (February 27,2013) has diverted to Halifax. Anyone know what is the reason?

It looks like USAirways 710 PHL-ZRH is also diverting. Is something going on?

Don't see the US Air flight diverting. Both Flightaware and USair.com say it is en route. No idea why the DL flight diverted but currently scheduled to depart Halifax at 4:00am. That's too long on the ground for a medical.

Hopefully it is not another triple 7 with an engine failure.

Must be mechanical. DAL9966 is already built to reposition another 763 to Halifax from JFK.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL9966

Thanks for that - glad it is a 763.

It's a 767. Definitely mechanical if it's delayed that long. If not then the crew must be timing out.

Will edit this post once I find the ship on FlightAware. DL.com is saying that this is a modded 767 (searched ATL-ZRH on flight status instead of putting in 66 as the flight number) and it still showed there those icons.

EDIT: It's N154DL. 3P6-er.

ATL - ZRH is a 767. I've been the recipient of 2 this year... it happens... you learn to deal.

I'm sure DL will handle things from a customer standpoint much better than ghetto UA did on my diversion to YYT earlier.

You're acting like it's something that happens to the 777 all the time.

Currently on flight 66 which landed without event in Halifax. We have deplaned and are waiting for new equipment which should depart from JFK momentarily. Problem was oxygen bottle for the cockpit losing too much pressure to continue (went from 1400psi to 20psi). In the event of a decompression, there would have been no O2 for the pilot to fly the plane.

Flight aware shows the replacement plane (DL9966) as a Boeing 767-300 (twin-jet) H/B763/Q, SeatGuru shoes the 76Q as a domestic config with 30 domestic FC seats rather than 36 BE sleepers. If it is true that they are subbing a domestic equipped bird, there will be some mighty unhappy campers in BE.

Perhaps I am reading this wrong?

^

Welcome to FT, and thanks for posting since you were on the flight.

I doubt that is the case. Flightaware could've screwed up, and there are only 4 domestic 763s that I know of that are ETOPS certified. Those planes go to Hawaii and some domestic runs between DTW/ATL-SLC/LAS/LAX, etc. I don't think they'd be going to JFK unless there was an equip swap.

They probably had a spare a/c sitting at JFK that they could ferry to Halifax.

So far things are not going well. Replacement flight has been delayed several times out of JFK and there is no promise of an arrival time less than 8.5 hours late. We will be arriving ZRH in time for afternoon rush hour!

Due to the late hour at Halifax Airport, there is no food or drink available save a few bottles of water that are being spread around. Folks are camped out on the floor with on-board pillows and blankets. Frankly it looks a little like that recent Carnival Cruise that hit the news earlier this month.

What kinds of flight delay compensation should kick in at this point?

Yeah, the /Q refers to the navigation equipment on the aircraft, not the specific DL configuration. The H/ denotes a heavy aircraft.

IMO, this is a necessary diversion as flight deck oxygen is a Minimum Equipment List item.

Good luck in getting to ZRH.

Thanks for all the feedback, so far our replacement has not yet left JFK. Now showing 12:45am, although original departure was to be 11:15. So tonight it's death by a thousand 15-minute delays.

We should all be in a hotel.