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Date | Airline | Flight | Type | Regn | Routing | Time | Miles | Remarks | |
| Back | 11 Sep 23 | AS | 828 | 737-9 | N972AK | HNL-HNL | 03:02 | 1389 mi | Divert back to HNL | Next |
After a nice day photographing planes at Honolulu, eventually it was time to board for Anchorage. The flight was only about 50% full so it was bound to be a fairly comfortable red-eye overnight flight to Anchorage.
Honolulu departure board an hour before flight time:
Snack onboard:
Sometime after we reached cruise and the snacks were served the captain comes on and asks "Are there any medical personnel onboard?" Hmm. That's usually not a good sign.
After a while without any information from the flight crew the captain came back on and said something like "Well folks we just completed a turn. Unfortunately it was 180 degrees as we are now headed back to Honolulu." Frankly, I didn't even realize we were in any kind of maneuver. I understood the reasoning behind the diversion back to Honolulu. Thankfully we didn't have a full plane load of people being inconvenienced by this...only half a plane load :-)
Once back on the ground at HNL (about 2am by now) and while standing in the queue at the gate to get re-booked, I had to scrap my plans for the Anchorage-Seattle 'milk run' flight. There was no way to get to Anchorage to meet that flight so I simply booked the first flight out of HNL for SEA in just a few hours time. I stayed in line to let the gate agent know I wouldn't need the re-booking to Anchorage in 20 hours and asked for a customer service phone number so I could work on getting my Mileage Plan miles reinstated. In the end I got my miles reinstated plus a $300 flight credit for the inconvenience caused by the diversion back to HNL.
I found a quiet corner of the gate area and caught a few winks before getting ready for my 7am departure to Seattle.
N972AK at Honolulu prior to boarding:
Below is Flight Aware screenshot of this flight after diverting back to HNL:
Below is Flight Radar 24 screenshot of this flight after diverting back to HNL:
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