Originally Posted by
Genghis the Engineer
It struck me as a slightly odd position, since a diversion is a diversion, I'd had no problem getting what I needed without declaring an urgency or emergency, and could potentially have just landed in a field or continued a little into night, so hadn't used the term.
I agree Genghis -- it's daft. It's a failure to ditinguish between andemergency situation from a risk management point of view, and a request for priority from ATC. While the two are often coincident, they aren't always, as you found out.
While I have a lot of time for the principle behind the free-landing-fee-for-diversions thing, I can't help but think that in practice it benefits those who plan poorly, at the expense of those who plan well (and have foreseen the contingency of needing to land at a rather expensive airport rather than their intended destination).