Routing from East Midlands to Palma

[danielsirrom]

This question will really expose my level of "sadness"' but here goes any way!

I often track flights from EMA on FlightRadar24and this morning a Thomson flight to Palma took a rather different route. It took of in the westerly direction, turned north west, flew over Stoke on Trent, continued over Liverpool, turned Westerly again, almost reached Dublin, turned and flew south westerly over Ireland...I then had to get up so stopped watching!

Does anyone know why it had to take that route and not the more usual left turn after take off and straight down South? It must have added at least 250 miles to the journey.

Dan

[danielsirrom]

Think I've just worked it out.....ATC strike?

[ZOOKER]

Occasionally, traffic will return to East Midlands by reversing that route, or even UN864 via MONTY.
Manchester outbounds/inbounds would often route overhead Dublin if using the 'TANGO' routes to The Canary Islands, again to avoid the normal flow-restrictions over France or the Iberian Peninsula.
Hope that helps.

[Burnie5204]

Jet2 normally goes that way for TFS.

However, if it is non-standard for TOM then it's likely to be to avoid overflying French controlled airspace and incurring the horrendous (multiple hours) slot delays that everyone else has had today.

[crispey]

All noted with interest.Several TOM flights(and others) have made huge detours today and a Jet2 is currently from Mallorca to Leeds doing the same.

But an afternoon Jet 2 from Pisa to Newcastle took the (more or less) usual route right over France.Is this the luck of the draw?

[oldbalboy]

flights to & from PMI seem worst affected as very few controllers at work in southern France, friends flying yesterday were saying flight times from LGW & LTN in excess of 3 hours each way!

[danielsirrom]

Thanks for all the replies.