Recently we've seen some diversions of aircraft to unexpected places. Perhaps the most surprising in the last few months was seeing a QANTAS A380 "Spirit of Australia" at Baku in Azerbaijan. This was followed not long ago by an Air Canada flight to India ending up at the same airport.

What's your vote for the most unusual combination of airline and airport? This doesn't necessarily have to be a diversion that you yourself experienced as a passenger.

A Northwest DC-10 en route to AMS from BOM made an emergency landing in Tehran, Iran back in 2005.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-jet-...anian-capital/

These days, no US carrier overflies Iranian airspace so such a diversion is going to be unlikely for the foreseeable future.

My vote would go to the Delta diversion to Ascension Island in 2013. Here's the FT thread about it.

9JAN DL 201 JNB-ATL diverts to the Ascension Island

The Wikipedia article on the island. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island

LarryJ that was one that immediately came to mind. Also the DL diversion to Wake Island is another one that popped into my head. Delta looking to fly to the most remote islands on earth (diversion to Wake Is.)?

As an aside, I always thought IPC was the most remote IATA airport on earth (as in no other nearby airports to divert to). For flights between SCL and IPC, origin and destination are the closest diversion points. According to Wikipedia, Chilean authorities have even put a restriction on air ops; only one a/c in flight at a time can be closer to IPC than the alternates of SCL and PPT so if the plane is somehow disabled on the runway at IPC, another a/c headed there won't find itself unable to land. Certainly no wing tip pairs to/from this airport!

To answer my own question, I will nominate the Air France diversion of an A380 to Goose Bay in Newfoundland & Labrador in Canada--a massive aircraft at a small airport--due to a blown engine.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfo...-bay-1.4315132

IMO, Ascension (post #3) is far more unique than Goose Bay from a diversion standpoint, and will be difficult to top. Goose Bay was actually one of the designated diversion airports on 9/11/2001. Furthermore, it is occasionally used for refueling stops on Europe US flights. Finally, it has scheduled passenger passenger service to about a dozen destinations.

Ascension, by contrast, is a desolate island in the middle of the South Atlantic, and does not lie along one of the busiest flight paths in the world.

Years ago flying PIT/FLL on USAir. Thunderstorms rolled into FLL so we divert to MIA. We sit on the ground for about an hour, then refuel and get released. As soon as we take off thunderstorms roll back into South Florida so we divert this time to RSW. Sit on the ground there for about an hour then take off. Then thunderstorms role in again and we circle the Everglades for about 30 minutes before landing. Entire time circling around South Florida and sitting on the ground over 4 hours.

Did they give you an option to deplane in Miami?

The passengers on BA8 that left Haneda, Tokyo for Heathrow, London on the 1st October were taken to Alaska and Canada on their diversion.

There is a first hand account here
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35638767-post251.html
Where “interesting” takes on a wider meaning than I would usually attribute to it.

Makes a grim culmination to all the issues related in this thread: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...ervice-17.html

In the early 1980s I boarded Reeve Aleutian's Electra for a flight from Cold Bay to Anchorage, one that I had taken I don't know how many times previously. We taxied and then the captain announced that we were going to divert to Adak and possibly Shemya before heading into town.

Adak at the time was a major US Navy base and ostensibly the fifth (?) largest community in Alaska; Shemya, aka "the Rock" was a USAF base with highly restricted access. Reeve's scheduled Electra to those places (ANC-ADK-SYA-ADK-ANC) had gone mechanical in Anchorage, so we were the designated replacement. So our 620 mi. nonstop from CDB to ANC was transformed potentially into a 2500+ mile tour of the Aleutian chain.



We were informed after takeoff that we weren't going as far as Shemya, because the military refused access to a plane full of civilians without the necessary clearances even to land at the ultra-secret Shemya base (lots of Cold War electronics and probably some exotic aircraft there at the edge of USSR airspace.) So it was just out to Adak (still over 600 miles in the wrong direction) turning a 2-hour flight into more like six or seven. The weather was typical for the Chain, where we said it didn't rain locally; the wind brought it there from Russia. Seriously bumpy and annoying. The light load from CDB consisted mainly of fisherpeople and cannery workers who smelled like... but then augmented by dozens of USN personnel and families.

Insult to injury, the Adak kitchen had gone home, so we had to land back in CDB where Reeve loaded some meals prepared in the little cafe at Cold Bay run by the Flying Tigers airfreight base, who also didn't have much in the way of supplies for a now-full Electra full of grumpy passengers and lots of ADK people - crying kids and all - making their way back to the world.

The result? A yummy inflight meal of baloney sandwiches on raisin bread, a bag of chips, and a Twinkie. Just one. Bon appetit.

Midway (MDY) has hosted quite a few diversions too.
Most recently in 2021, there was a United 787 and a Hawaiian A330

https://www.beliefmedia.com.au/bo-co...ight-41-tehran

The pilot is interviewed in this Podcast. Its a great story.

The Tenerife Airport disaster of two 747s colliding to make up the deadliest crash event to date (583 fatalities) always sends chills up my spine when I think of diversions. Most everyone who's researched aviation accidents to any degree has likely come across this but if you haven't, it's a crazy story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster

I was flying from Bali DPS to Makassar UPG, and the flight diverted to ... Bali. Apparently, the pilot hadn't checked the fuel gauge before take-off.

Not a good feeling.