Originally Posted by
Rivet Joint
The above diverted to BRS this evening even though others waited in the hold for the weather to clear up. To add insult to injury the aircraft operating has taken off from BRS and flown straight past SOU presumably empty and on route back to MUC. Anyone know why it didn't hold like the others? Also why did it not fly back to SOU to at least operate the return leg? Surely its not just to keep the customers happy but also to save the refunds/compo?
When I previously worked for the forerunner of BMIr, Business Air, they had a very tiny mind mentality of staying on, or as close to, schedule as possible, i.e. 3 minutes after STD was considered a delay and heads will roll ... Furthermore their schedules were so finely tuned that in the event of more than a minimal delay they would be hit by night curfews and/or crew duty hour problems.
That said there can be operational reasons not obvious to the passenger and/or spotter, had that flight today routed BRS/SOU/MUC then the additional sector would have reduced the crew's allowable duty time by 45 minutes whilst delaying subsequent flights of the day by perhaps a further hour, did the crew's duty day have 1 hour 45 minutes, on top of the delay already incurred by diverting to BRS, to play with and what would the later implications of any night curfews or similar have been?
And perhaps they diverted to BRS because of a crew duty hours problem and/or they weren't carrying enough fuel to continue holding indefinitely.