Talk about a long day. Passengers had little to give thanks about on KLM685 yesterday. The flight returned to Amsterdam…after already reaching North America.
The flight was headed to Mexico City, where Popocatepetl had earlier erupted. A volcanic ash plume rose 21,000 feet making flight conditions potentially hazardous.
The reason for the return was the unfavourable flying conditions above Mexico after activity of the volcano Popocatepetl. Our apologies for the inconvenience.
— Royal Dutch Airlines (@KLM) November 29, 2019
The decision to return to AMS was made out of abundance of caution, as many flights navigated around the smoke and landed without issue. The difficulty for KLM was that the eruption occurred after the flight had taken off and it was not clear how bad it was.
The @KLM flight #KL685 from Amsterdam @Schiphol to Mexico turned around over Canada ( New Brunswick ) and is heading back towards Amstedam now. So far its almost 11 hours flying and the passengers are shortly to land back where they started from #avgeek pic.twitter.com/E0IThRaw6b
— Michael Kelly (@Michaelkelly707) November 29, 2019
Landing in Canada or the USA may have made sense in theory, but it made more sense to return to Amsterdam. First, passengers may have had visa issues entering either country. Second, let’s say the flight landed in Toronto, New York, or even Cancun. KLM has neither the resources nor manpower in those places to re-accomodate a full 747-400. Returning to Amsterdam almost six hours into the flight just made sense when conditions in Mexico City were deemed unsafe.
CONCLUSION
An 11-hour flight to nowhere would annoy most people (not me, who would have loved it)…especially when other planes were landing without issue in Mexico City. But while KLM no doubt took the safe approach, it is a testament to its priority on safety.
(H/T: View from the Wing)
No choice than to go back. US would have been out of the question. Without the right papers, and let’s not forget without the pre-departure clearance, passengers and crew would have been detained and locked away for interrogation and ‘further processing’.
The whole ordeal would have taken a lot longer than returning to AMS and get back to Mexico on a later flight.
Wise decision from KLM
The real question that has not been addressed…did the business passengers still get their Delft houses?
excellent question. silly me, i was only wondering if they got their miles.
This is a great way to catch criminals. They are going from A to B both of which don’t extradite to the US. Declare technical emergency divert to the US and arrest the fugitive. Of course can only be done with airlines that follow the western law so: aeroflot, all Chinese airlines, air kroyo, Trump always out of the question.
The drugs you take must have been exceptionally stronger than usualy when you typed your post.
When Canadian killer Luke M-something (who killed men and ate them) was caught, the Canadians sent an air force A330 to pick him up to avoid the chance of a diversion. If the A330 was diverted, they could decide where to divert, such as Iqaluit, not Keflavik.
There was another reason as there were horses as cargo which could not disembark in for example Cancun.
I think its not the safety but from economical aspects they went back. Cancun or other mexico airport was no problem without those horses.
Second the above. The precious and delicate cargo also meant non US diversion airports were out of the question.
A very informative well written article. Thank you, Captain Obvious….
This situation reflects extremely poorly upon the United States. The plane should have been allowed to land.
Thank you for reposting my original tweet Matthew and covering the story in a non judgemental manner