just heard, an Alitalia flight into BOS, making a Bangor stop.

AZ Flight from Milan to Boston diverted to land at Bangor between 12.20pm and 12.25pm today. Another supposed match on the old highly reliable no-fly list.

Soon all transatlantic flights will have a mandatory stop in Bangor!

The two flights I find AZ has into BOS are:

AZ 0614 Rome-Boston

AZ 0618 Milan-Boston

I don't know which one it is. I don't see anything irregular with the arrival status on either flight at AZ's website. However, Faux News at 11:30am Eastern Time announced an AZ flight bound for Boston was being diverted to Bangor.

No further information was available, but I strongly suspect it has something to do with "lists". Hopefully it won't be another innocent family -- at the same time if it is someone on a list, why don't they just let it goto BOS and grab him/her there? If the destination is BOS, the money spent to divert a flight to BGR has to be substantial.

Hopefully it's not a different/serious matter, as it wasn't stated why the diversion was being done.

Also - if one looks at a great circle mapper, it can also be argued under a great circle routing, BOS would be the first US city flights on the great circle path would arrive at -- but mileage is slightly shorter to BGR.

OT: What about flights which use the southern north Atlantic crossing? There are two common ETOP crossings, one a nothern route which uses Iceland, Greenland, & Canadian cities as potential landing spots.

The second a more southern route which uses the Azores as potential landing spots and then the next possible landing spot would be along the Canadian coastline -- but this flight path often does not overfly Canada. Flights from Spain and Portugal to the east coast often use this southern route. i.e. when I fly MAD-JFK the flight path uses the southern N Atlantic crossing.

SDF_Traveler

Thanks -- wasn't sure what the scoop was with the limited snip I saw on TV.

This is getting out of hand with with all of these flights being diverted to Bangor, especially when the destination is BOS. You're right, at the rate we're going, all trans-Atlantics will have a manditory "security check" in Bangor before proceeding to destination.

I've heard of other flights from the South America/The Carribean/etc being forced to land at Key West Naval Air Station as well, but the ones I've heard of don't seem to get the press the European flights do.

What about flights from Asia or Polar Crossings? Looks like the SIN-EWR/JFK trans-polar flight, BGR would probably apply, but how about Japan/Korea - US. Flight path often varies significantly on some of these because of winds.

SDF_Traveler

Wonder what this does to real estate values in Bangor - the thought that there are so many flights with "terrorists" landing there on a seemingly routine basis!!!

Nothwithstanding the argument that Bangor may be the first airport enroute to the US across the N. Atlantic, I wonder if the people of Bangor feel less "loved" - looks like they seem to be pretty expendable!!!

.....

What a suprise - the guy they "caught" is not a terrorist

And they even got the Canadians in on the hysteria -- they escorted the jet through their airspace with two F-15s.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/mas...erted_to_maine

One can only hope that this all gets old soon.

Could someone tell me what happened to the little boy who cried wolf too many times?

SDF_Traveler

I remember reading a story sometime back in say 2002 that talked about the Bangor airport and how it made quite a bit of money pre 9/11 as planes would stop there to offload drunks, etc either before or right after crossing the Atlantic. The gist of the article focused on how they were making much less money...fewer diversions, now that people on planes were more behaved

Perhaps a group from the Bangor airport have been lobbying the TSA encouraging diversions just so they can charge more fees!

With the "take credit for everything" setup, since we haven't heard anything else about this, it seems that we yanked another/more innocent person(s) off a foreign carrier.

And we wonder why Europeans dislike the USA.

Some news reports say the family was released.

Idiocy on the part of our government.

Good point.
I think the wolf eventually ate him when people ignored his repeated false alarms.

We dont dislike the USA, we just dislike the hassle getting there.

According to this article on CNN.com, the suspected person was an applicant for landed immigrant status. One would have assumed that the government has already thoroughly investigated his background as part of the application process.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TRAVEL/05/19....ap/index.html
"Homeland Security officials said the man, whose name was not made public, was not a suspected terrorist. After questioning, he voluntarily withdrew his application for status as a permanent legal resident and will be deported, Customs and Border Protection Assistant Commissioner Kristi Clemens said Wednesday."

I can't say I'm surprised he decided to withdraw his application. I would as well.