To divert or not to divert?
Firstly I apologise if this is a daft question, but an experience some years ago has always made me wonder about diverting and who makes the final decision to divert. The tragic events aboard the Singapore flight brought it back into my mind.
I am not a nervous flyer by any means, but one flight back in 2008 came very close to stopping me flying ever again.
My route was Manchester - CDG - Hong Kong aboard an Air France A340 for the longhaul sector. The plane was half empty, beautifully smooth flight. As we reached the halfway point the pilot made an announcement that we may have to divert due to the tail end of a typhoon that was slower to shift that had been expected. He apologised for the inconvenience and would update us later in the flight.
No further announcements came and we started to descend, I assumed that all was fine and having a window seat I has happily watching the world go by. Seatbelt signs came on and another announcement to the effect that we had been granted permission to land at Hong Kong but that there would be some weather so keep belted up.
There then came a sound that I had never heard before (or since). The sound was akin to having several truckloads of pea gravel being dropped from a great height on the roof of the fuselage. Peering out the window it was a full on lightning display, the sound of the thunder plus pea gravel was terrifying. I looked at the display on the back of the seat infront and we were still way over 20k feet up...subconsciously tightening the seatbelt, knuckles going a little white. By the time we were only about 45 minutes out, we had pea gravel, thunder, swaying in the wind, bouncing about, lightning....and the occasional scream from other passengers.
Finally we touched earth at Hong Kong, the pea gravel was still hammering the plane and now we had a ruddy great bow wave and water being flung in all directions (I was in a seat on the wing and I was transfixed to the waterworks display as we slowed down). We taxied to the gate and another announcement from the cockpit, a little shaky this time, apologising for the poor conditions etc and please stay belted til we arrive at the gate. Once at the gate there was a plane load of collective "thank heck for that" or words to that effect. Once everyone was off the plane and started making our way to passport control, the authorities stated - with a smile - that we were the last flight since the airport was now closed due to the weather.
When this sort of thing happens, who takes the decision to divert...is it the pilot or is it ATC?
A question for the pilots here, if you were in this situation and you knew that the destination airport was experiencing extreme weather at the halfway point, would you take the alternative destination or would you continue as our flight did?
Just curious.