Where have you been diverted?

[Justin L]

This article on a Cathay Pacific flight from AMS-HKG being diverted to Kazakhstan got me wondering on what interesting destinations members of this board have been diverted to for whatever reason.

I have only been diverted once due to weather. A Japanese domestic ANA flight I was on from Tokyo-Haneda en route to Hakodate several years ago was divereted to Sapporo-Chitose due to heavy snow.

(I did experience my first plane de-icing yesterday from SLC-LAS though. I was in a window seat over the wing and watched the whole thing - quite interesting!)

What diversion experiences have others had?

[Jack B]

Although not that odd, Tamworth on a Qantas 737 was somewhat unusual to me!

[Torin Wilson]

When I flew from Frankfurt Hahn to Budapest on Wizzair we were just starting to divert to Bratislava, Slovakia. The runway lights at Budapest failed, and we circled Budapest for 20 minutes, then started to divert. Just as we starting climbing again the runway lights came back on.

Not quite a divert, but the closest I've had!

[Daniel M]

MEL-PER, got diverted to Kalgoorlie due fog in PER. Refuelled then were on our way again.

Was in VH-TJB, the QF 737 that was painted in Solomons colours I think?

[Brian Wilkes]

MEL-LST divert to HBA due fog after 3 go-arounds at LST!

[Guy W]

AKL-ZQN on NZ back in 2003. We circled around Wanaka for 30 mins before diverted to CHC. The check in at ZQN told me a week later that the diversion was caused by a cracked windscreen and NZ doesn't have the people or parts to fix it in ZQN.

[Peter H.]

Qantas Syd-Lax overflew LAX to land in LAS to take on fuel so we could land in LAX

Understand. Neither do I. It was apparently a bit wet in LAX at time of overfly

[Steve Jones]

A Vienna-Yerevan (Armenia) flight on an Austrian Arrows F70 I was on diverted to Tiblisi, Georgia due to fog. It might have been OK except that Georgia and Armenia don't like each other very much (does anyone in that corner of the world?), Georgia had just had a (peaceful, mind you) revolution, and Austrian wanted the plane back in VIE so dumped us all in TBS.

The long and the short of it was that we all had to queue at a single airport counter to get emergency Georgian visas (at a hefty USD cost, with much $$ lending among pax), wait for a bus to be organised and endure a trip on some of the worst roads I have been on, past war-ravaged villages including a 5 hour stop at the border where no-one was expecting a bus load of foreigners mostly without Armenian visas (you can get them on arrival at the airport, not at land borders!)...

Thank heavens the pax on our plane included a couple of fairly senior UN officials who (relatively speaking) smoothed the way for us at the 2 borders.

After landing in TBS at around 4am, we got to out final destination around 9pm.

[Brett o]

This happen a while ago and we on VH-OJA when the plane was still very new and we were flying from Singapore to London and we got diverted to Copenhagen due to a fuel issue in the middle of winter.
Back then you could still smoke on planes and as they were refueling the plane they open the doors and we had that wonderful smell of jet fuel.
Not surprisingly a number of smokers attempted to light up a cigarette and were promptly told by the cabin crew to put it out or the plane could blow up
We ended up being 14 hours late as the crew timed out but I am sure many more of you have had much longer delays

[Andrew P]

in all my flights over 30 years, have never been diverted, have had aborted takeoff and landings etc even a few stopped engines