Scenario: Bad weather at destination -> diversion
These are a couple of factors that influence our decision:
- The diversion airport must be in range (remaining fuel minus a little extra..)
- The airport must be approved for the Aircraft type (fire fighting etc..)
- The instrument approach procedures have to be good enough for prevailing weather conditions
- Pilots must be qualified for the instrument approach
...etc
Now come operational matters
- is the airport able to handle your type of aircraft (stairs, highloader, refueling..)
- Are there enough hotelrooms
- Will the passengers be aloud to leave the airplane (example flight to India, divert to Pakistan or Israel and Jordan etc)
- Is there even a handling agent of your company
IF (!!) we have the possibility to combine these factors with costumer service, ergo divert to munich instead of stuttgart because half the passengers had a connection flight from frankfurt to munich anyway, great!
And most important there is our stomach: even if we just FEEL, that a diversion to stuttgart is safer, then costumer service has to step back.
Rgds
PS: As you can imagine, a diversion combined with a technical or medical incident/emergency, costumer service will not be considered at all.