London ATC, Saturday Morning Diversion
Yesterday morning I went onto a London frequency and heard an exchange that went along the following lines:
London: Turkish XYZ, Dublin is now closed. Where do you want to go?
Pause
Turkish: We will go to Heathrow.
London: Heathrow will not accept you. Nor will Gatwick or Manchester. What are your intentions?
Turkish: Errr, standby
Having just left Manchester I'm certain that the weather there was fine and there appeared to be plenty of free stands and ramp space available. No explanations or help were offered to the Turkish during my brief time on the frequency.
I'm guessing that in choosing Heathrow the Turkish chap was going to his company preferred alternate, probably his primary diversion. I'm also guessing that LGW and MAN were his plan B and C.
Does anyone know how this panned (!) out for him? He would have perceived himself to be pretty boxed in at this stage and I'd guess that the cockpit was a frenzy of charts and plates soon after. If I were heading into a foreign destination and were to be treated as this chap appeared to be, without explanation, I'd be pretty steamed up about it.
I'm well aware that I only have a very small part of the picture but it's left me wondering. Anyone amongst our ATC colleagues care to throw some light on this?
All the best for 2010.
Bernoulli