Can diverted flights pick up passengers?
 

On December 03, UA914 SFO-IAD was diverted to LAS because of an on-board medical emergency.
Assuming that there were seats available, could LAS-IAD pax have boarded this flight?

In Short......
 

NO!

1)they just stop long enough to offload the pax(s) with the medical problem and those in their party and then just as quickly turn around and continue onto the final destination.

2)the flight could be full anyways.

3) lets say 1-4 seat have been vacated... too much of a hassle to onload 1-4 pax and their bags..

Having said that..still..

NO

Onloading a pax too much hassle?
....Still the question begs: why not?

And why not?

There are stories here where UA has specifically diverted a lightly-loaded flight to pick up passengers rather than leave them stranded at the origin. I don't see why they couldn't do it if it makes logistics sense.

I think they can do whatever they want to. Once diverted, I believe dispatch needs to rework the flight plan, fuel, etc. I've seen some get off on a diversion before but don't remember if more folks were enplaned.

yah a diversion never goes off quickly, flight plans, fuel etc., I've only been diverted once where we picked up passengers, but that was SAS in Sweden

Not necessarily a diversion...

UA has on multiple occasions (in order to try to recover from the air traffic control nightmare known as ORD during inclement weather) tagged on the smaller stations.

For example, BDL-ORD made a pit stop in MHT to pick up passengers (mostly O/D, since connections were already hosed) due to the inbound ORD-MHT being canceled due to WX at ORD.

I have personally be on a MHT-ORD flight that made a stop in ALB to load passengers (the inbound ORD-ALB flight was canceled due to WX).

In both cases, ual.com reflected this pit stop as did flightaware.com prior to take-off (ie flight plans filed prior to departure); a pre-mediated pit stop. :D

And, no, you don't get the extra EQM or EQS. :mad:

There are always exceptions, but I'm sure UA's priority once the emergency was taken care of was getting the flight back on its way to IAD as quickly as possible to protect as many connections as possible.

*phew* this has never happened to me, thankfully, after ~185k BIS this year that almost always originated from BDL.

I once flew on a flight that was diverted to pick up pax from a canceled flight.

Actually, no. ;)

This begs the question of whether English is a static or living language. If living, it could just be that the grammarians have not caught up.

During a storm several years ago, my plane was diverted from Denver to Grand Junction. Grand Junction was my final destination, so I inquired about simply finishing my trip, instead of getting back on the diverted plane and then connecting back to Grand Junction. Half of the UA personnel thought that it was okay, but half thought it was illegal to do.
I finally simply slipped away as we were waiting in the terminal. I made the decision for them, but nobody actually knew what the rule was.

i highly doubt that it was illegal-i don't see why it would be as everything is within the united states (assuming grand junction is in the united states)

do you remember if you ended up getting EQMs for your flight?

if they make a pit stop are you allowed to get off and get like a cup of coffee or something-can the FAs/Pilot legally keep you on the plane if the door is open?

That's happened some times in the summer storm season in Colorado where a flight to Denver will be diverted to Colorado Springs.

They have brought stairs to the plane and offloaded a handful of passengers whose final was The Springs.

However, the FAs made it clear....the checked baggage will not be offloaded, and it's each passenger's responsibility to get their checked bag(s) in Denver (because they won't make the connecting flight watch bag-matching).