Amsterdam-Seattle flight: storm the exits?

"Adam Weiss" wrote in message
...
Some Guy wrote:
"Clark W. Griswold, Jr." wrote:


Instead, it seems the pilots were flying by the seat of their
pants, with no direction from head office.

No way this was a pilot call. The decision to land at Moses Lake
was probably made by Dispatch.


Let's see.

A DC 10 arriving from an overseas location, need to divert, need to
land at a place where customs can handle the de-planing.

Yes, the obvious solution is Moses Lake! They're an "international"
airport after all, don'tcha know!

I'm willing to bet the dispatch office was pretty crazy that day. They
probably had many other airplanes to deal with, so if they didn't spend
the time to look up whether or not Moses Lake was a point of entry airport
they can hardly be blamed.


Brilliant! NWA dispatch saves the day!


But as the hours passed, you can bet it went all the way up
the top of the company. That's why there's no excuse for
what happened.


Any NWA memos generated as a result? (or will I have to check out the
various web-based airline boards to find out?)


Bangor International in Maine is kindof like Moses Lake. A little airport
with a huge runway in a small city - granted the city of Bangor is about 3
times the size of Moses Lake, but it's still not big (33,000 popl. to
Moses Lake's 11,000). The airport, per their own website, does not have
regularly scheduled international flights arriving or departing.

Bangor has actively pursued charter operations, and generally handles lots
of charters, including military charters. Enough to be able to process
widebodies. You may recall that the United flight with Cat Stevens (Yusaf
Islam) was diverted to Bangor when they thought they had a terrorist on
board.

http://www.flybangor.com/flight.asp

But they ARE a point of entry airport for US customs.

http://www.iaopa.org/proc/usairports/

Maybe they might look at making Moses Lake a point of entry as well. (Of
course my understanding is that Bangor gets ALOT of diverted flights; I'm
not sure if Moses Lake gets nearly as many).

"Jeff Hacker" wrote:

That action could have been any number of things. Certainly there were
enough
NWA cabin staff on board to watch building exits. There were also airport
and
other airline ground staff in the area. They could have been asked to
help.

Other airline ground staff? Does Moses Lake have any scheduled airline
service?

Big Sky runs a half dozen Alaska Air commuter flights each day.

"Jeff Hacker" wrote:

That action could have been any number of things. Certainly there were
enough
NWA cabin staff on board to watch building exits. There were also airport
and
other airline ground staff in the area. They could have been asked to
help.

Other airline ground staff? Does Moses Lake have any scheduled airline
service?

Big Sky runs a half dozen Alaska Air commuter flights each day.

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 02:49:22 GMT in rec.travel.air, "Jeff Hacker"
wrote:

A DC 10 arriving from an overseas location, need to divert, need to
land at a place where customs can handle the de-planing.

Yes, the obvious solution is Moses Lake! They're an "international"
airport after all, don'tcha know!

it's where they do final testing and pilot training on all boeing
aircraft.

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 02:49:22 GMT in rec.travel.air, "Jeff Hacker"
wrote:

A DC 10 arriving from an overseas location, need to divert, need to
land at a place where customs can handle the de-planing.

Yes, the obvious solution is Moses Lake! They're an "international"
airport after all, don'tcha know!

it's where they do final testing and pilot training on all boeing
aircraft.