Major mess at Logan
Massport arrivals list at 11 p.m. Yellow means delays of up to 45 minutes; red means even longer delays.
Lots of canceled, diverted and delayed flights at Logan Airport tonight thanks to fog and, apparently, some sort of problem with the system used to guide planes into the airport.
Spencer McEwen tweets he has now been stuck sitting at T.F. Green on a Logan-bound Virgin plane longer than if the airline had simply put everybody on buses and driven them to Logan - and then driven them back to Green for the hell of it and then back to Boston. They've already had to pump out the plane's waste systems so passengers can relieve themselves again as they wait for "the Logan approach system" to get fixed.
UPDATE, 11:09 p.m.: McEwen reports the flight crew is now rationing what little food they have: Children and the elderly get first dibs.
UPDATE, 12:04 a.m: McEwen tweets on arrival in Boston:
Touchdown in Boston. Everybody cheered and clapped.
Steve Garfield tweets he was late getting in from LaGuardia due to the fog.
Comments
Survivorman?
Call Bear Grills (sp?). Actually - I think the sox could use Bear on the mound tonight.
Yeah, according to Flightstats.com
Lufthansa and Air France are now serving the Frankfurt/Paris-Hartford-Boston route and British Airways is doing the London-Bangor-Boston run. Who knew A340s and Boeing 777s were in demand for such short hops? :-)
Flying from green to logan
Flying from green to logan boggles my mind. Im sure its a connection, but damn
Diverted
Sounds more like it was a plane from elsewhere that was forced to land at TF Green until it was safe to land at Logan instead of set up in a holding pattern at Logan with an unknown timetable.
Logan problems continue today
Yep, he was on a flight from LA.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 reports Logan's having the same issues today: Fog and air-traffic-control issues.
Diversion
Allow me to suggest a reason for the PVD diversion, so I can save Swirly the trouble of asking her flight attendant friend.
An aircraft that diverts to an airport which it does not normally serve has very little interest in incurring the cost of bussing people from there to the intended destination, unless there is no chance of getting to the destination some time that day. The reason is pretty simple - that plane needs to get to the destination airport (in this case Logan) anyway so it can pick up the passengers waiting for it there.
In this case, Virgin America is running between SFO or LAX and BOS. It diverted to PVD (either on order of ATC or because that aircraft does not have a large fuel cushion after a transcontinental flight). The aircraft needs to get to BOS to pickup the outbounds to SFO or LAX. Before you say "customer service" you should know that bussing is a pretty complicated thing becuase of the terms of the contract of carriage that the airlines are obligated to comply with by USDOT.
That said, Virgin America (and Atlantic, and Blue, and ....) are all pretty good companies. If you were on that flight and it really got bad (by this I mean you were at Green for >3 hours and there was no food or water), you should contact them. I will be surprised if they don't try to do something for you (within reason - they are hurting, too). You should also know, however, that in cases where weather is the demonstrable reasons for a diversion, airline's responsibility is very limited.
I wish you luck.
London flight?
If the plan originated in Europe and diverted to Rhode Island, they can't legally get off unless it was cleared through US customs before takeoff (like they do in Shannon, Calgary, Toronto, etc.) if TF Greene doesn't have customs. These are the least pleasant of delays.
(update: transcontinental, well, okay. I still wonder why they didn't just offer to let people off to beg a ride from Aunt Edna in Woonsocket or otherwise arrange their own transportation.)
Maybe they were diverted elsewhere..
It appears that most or all transatlantic services coming into Boston were diverted to Bangor and Hartford, which do have customs facilities. However, according to the above mentioned website and Massport, the diverted flights eventually made it to Logan.
Bangor and Hartford
Bangor and Harford can handle the wide-bodies used for long-range flights, too. Likely a consideration.