DR - Fair comment. I was working with the quote from the ABC article where it said "The flight crew, after again consulting the on-call physician not on board, decided to continue to Dallas with about 45 minutes left until arrival..." and an assumption of a groundspeed close to 500 kts. But on second thoughts this would place them (assuming a route inside US airspace) in the area of the Texas/New Mexico boarder. Again, using this article, this unpleasant episode started over Arizona in the region of Phoenix. But if the flight went through Mexican airspace, their options were even fewer. What I had not realised is the how little there is in this part of the world. There's a lot of and not much else.
PM