One thing that pilots deal with all of the time, something that virtual pilots can skip lightly over (since there is always the option to disable fuel burn, to say nothing of changing the weather instantly!), is the selection and possible use of alternate airports in our flying. All flights, VFR and IFR and big airplane as well as small airplane, require that consideration be given to the successful completion of the flight when conditions change from the original plan.

Usually this involves changes in weather; since of all the factors that affect flight, weather is indeed the most fickle. The regulations guide us both as to the need to consider an alternate and the conditions that make an airport suitable as an alternate. In purely meteorological terms, an alternate airport must be planned whenever the forecast weather at destination is below certain limits, which differ for VFR and IFR flights, and can be found in the FAR's. In the case of IFR flights, there are additional weather limits which bear on the suitability of an airport as an alternate. So if the destination forecast is below the specified ceiling and visibility when you are planned to arrive, you will search, in the flight planning process, for another suitable airport where the weather is forecast to be better than a different set of ceilings and visibilities. And you will plan on carrying sufficient fuel to proceed from your destination to your alternate, fly an approach, and then hold for 45 minutes. That is the minimum legal requirement for fuel. If you want to give yourself more options, carry more fuel; and if that is not possible, plan a series of shorter flights so that your available fuel can provide you with these extra options, such as holding at destination or choosing a more suitable alternate farther away.

All of this planning is just that - planning. Once you take off, the choices, and the consequences, are yours. You may change your designated alternate while you are enroute, if reports and new forecasts make for a better choice. You may also consider the fuel onboard to be your own possession - to use as you see fit. But in all things a conservative approach is warranted -- it would be foolish to use your "holding fuel" (the legal amount of which is intended for use at the alternate) at your destination, since you would be robbing yourself of options later on in the flight where they might be important.

There are other factors that might require the selection of an alternate airport for a given flight. Extended overwater flights always require an alternate airport in the overwater portion, typically within 180 minutes for most jets, and a few more minutes for others. This requirement protects against certain mechanical malfunctions overwater and allows for a landing on terra firma. Of course weather is a consideration here as well, not so much in the requirement for the alternate but in the requirement that the alternate be viable - obviously bad weather at an airport along the way might preclude a safe approach.

Flights in some mountainous areas, such as the Andes and possibly the Himalayas, require careful selection of alternate airports with respect to drift down over high terrain, especially in twin engine airplanes. This is to cover the loss of an engine over the middle of the mountain area. Terrain in these areas is sometimes in excess of the single engine ceiling of the airplane at its current weight, so an immediate turn toward lower terrain and a specific alternate airport is mandated.

There are many things that play into the selection of alternate airports. Other than weather, and thinking of the part 121 environment, things like runway weight bearing capability, approach aids, taxiway dimensions and weight bearing considerations, availability of suitable egress equipment like passenger stairs, jetways, baggage handling equipment, Customs, and of course ARFF, as well as more mundane considerations like does your company have a contract in place for fuel and services! And don't forget availability of hotels and such for accommodating crew and pax. Also maintenance, considering that a common reason for a diversion, particularly on the Oceanic segments, is a mechanical malfunction. And of course availability of fuel; although at any airport capable of handling a transport category jet, fuel is pretty much a given unless some disaster has precluded deliveries, particularly to island locations...

And thereby lies a tale or two, or three:

JFK-Rome in a 767-300. We had very little holding fuel, against a fine forecast and two alternates (Ciampino and Genoa). Two alternates is a common practice at the airline, at least when I was working. One will usually be close in, like EWR for JFK, and be intended for use if traffic backups at destination are the only stumbling block. They are obviously in the same weather pattern, and hence the second and more distant alternate. (An aside - often, in the part 121 world, the fuel requirements for a close-in alternate like EWR for JFK are actually less than the requirements for a no-alternate flight plan. This is the other reason you often see EWR or JFK as alternates for LGA and vice versa. Note, however, that LGA might not be a suitable alternate for the other two in the case of a widebody.)

Upon arrival in the greater Rome area, we discovered that the weather earlier that morning had been actually below CAT III minimums (yes, that is possible!). Although things had "cleared up" to around RVR 1200, there were several score of airplanes in various holding patterns all around the thigh of the boot. Upon arrival at our assigned hold, I determined that we had fuel for about 2 turns, using the Genoa alternate. Ciampino would have been out of the question for both weather and traffic reasons.

Once you get into the situation where you will probably go to an alternate, along with a bunch of other airplanes, an important consideration becomes beating the other guy to the fuel pump! So I immediately requested clearance to Genoa upon holding pattern entry. While the good controllers at Roma were figuring out how to get us up there, my compatriot on the ORD-FCO flight apparently took my hint and decided that Genoa (also his alternate - same dispatcher!) would be just fine for him as well. This is a phenomenon that is often seen in the airline world - everyone follows the last guy through the maelstrom like elephants in a circus parade, until one guy or gal decides that valor is NOT the better part of discretion and demands to go another way. I've seen it many times in my career; and on that day, as it turned out, the ORD flight got cleared to Genoa first, presumably because he was at a lower altitude in the stack. Damn and Hellmnation! The first of my best-laid plans began to go astray.

Just after landing at Genoa. There is a considerable bay behind the runway.

When we got to Genoa, I discovered that a Continental flight had aced both of our flights, and not only got there first, but actually was parked at a gate. We johnny-come-lately's had to settle for a spot on the expansive ramp. This remote location became a player in what followed.

The terminal and ramp at Genoa, where Continental has already grabbed the only available gate, leaving the ramp to us.

First order of business was to get hold of dispatch and discuss our next moves. But lo and behold, the SATCOM did not seem to work. We scratched our collective pilot heads about this, and conferred over VHF with the crew of the ORD flight, who also were suffering from this strange malady. Eventually we gave up trying to figure out what was going on, and got in touch with dispatch via HF single sideband radio through a commercial service called Stockholm Radio, the first time in my career I had recourse to that company.

While all of this was going on, it was becoming apparent that although Genoa was indeed the designated alternate on the flight plan, apparently none of our airplanes had ever made an appearance here before. This was made manifest to us in a growing inability to figure out how the company was going to pay for the fuel we would need to continue our journey. Incredible as it may seem (and make no mistake, I burned up the company's debrief system over this when I returned to JFK the following day!) we had no contract in place at Genoa for fuel or services. Long gone were the days when the Captain was equipped with big rolls of cash to pay for things like that; and of course also long gone were the days when the Captain himself was rich enough to pay for it on his or her own! (Happily, things are different now, and any widebody Captain can easily afford an entire 747-load of fuel just out of petty cash!)

The dispatcher told us to charge the fuel and services to a company American Express account, the number of which, astonishingly, he read out over the open airways of single sideband, for every ham radio enthusiast in the world to copy down! However, here ensued yet another sideshow of this amazing circus that the Genoa diversion was fast becoming -- just like that old MasterCard commercial, they didn't take American Express!! You can't make this stuff up!

Genoa is apparently not without a certain beauty and charm.

The Captain of the ORD flight, faced with the same problem, was indeed trying to pay for it himself; un-holstering his plastic (and in the process liberating several rare specimens of moths into the Italian ecosystem!) and proposing to put the ten or twenty thousand dollar charge on his credit card. I myself immediately tried to do the same, thinking the company would refund me the money before the bill collector knocked on my door, and also mentally adding up the award miles that a twenty thousand dollar charge would accrue!

But alas, the rewards were not to be mine, because USAA (whose credit card I have held since my pilot training days) keeps close track of charges; and was (and still is) loath to roll over to a huge charge in a foreign country in a town the cardholder had never set foot in. Denied! Try though I might to get over to the terminal and call USAA, I was unable to get in touch with them.

Meanwhile, we had a full planeload of passengers to deal with. This diversion was going to be a matter of hours and not minutes, so we had to find a way to keep the customers happy. The flight attendants, in Clint Eastwood's best tradition of "improvise, adapt, overcome" scrounged together a tolerable food service from the leftovers of both last night's dinner and this morning's breakfast, as well as all of the remaining coffee we had on board. We re-ran one of the movies from last night. And I availed myself of an old trick I had discovered years earlier - a cockpit open house. For some reason passengers, when faced with few or no alternatives, seem to relish a trip to the wheelhouse, and this group was no exception. I had, fortunately, coordinated this in advance with the flight attendants, because the line of eager sightseers snaked its way all the way to the rear of the airplane. We must have had over 100 people take us up on the offer, and many were the kids that got their pictures taken in the left seat with the Captain's hat on their merry little heads!

We were of no mind to just stay in Genoa since we had that full planeload of passengers; and the prospects of the company finding hotel rooms for all of them (and all of us) considering their abject inability to secure such a basic fundament as fuel, were low indeed. Fortunately, some bright soul in dispatch figured out that since we were in an "alliance" with British Airways, who had regular operations at Genoa, British would buy us the fuel and the company would repay them. And so it was that we finally got our fuel, and not a moment too soon, because the crew duty time limits were breathing down our necks. This was, fortunately, in the days before more stringent limits were set, and so we had a bit of regulatory wiggle room, so to speak. Suffice to say that we made it to Rome later that afternoon, after a further delay at Genoa of an hour at the end of the runway awaiting ATC clearance in the scrum that ensued after everyone went to alternates that morning!

Another time and different crew. A 777 bound from the USA to Rio de Janeiro had a medical problem onboard that dictated an immediate diversion. There was a chart in those days that depicted available alternates in the area between Venezuela and the south-of-the-Amazon portion of Brazil, but the chart did not have all of the details the crew needed. There are actually very few adequate alternate airports in that area; and although such flights are not extended overwater, they do indeed resemble ETOPS operations in terms of alternatives available.

This crew decided to divert to the nearest of the suitable alternates. Unfortunately "suitable", in this case, turned out to mean merely a decent runway. The airport had absolutely no stairs that could come anywhere near reaching the giddy heights of the 777 passenger doors, nor any jetways or even ladders. They eventually had to take off and go to yet another alternate. The way I heard the tale told, the ill passenger survived, so the story had a more or less happy ending.

Medical issues have been the cause of the majority of my diversions over the course of my career. I recall one in particular - it was the first day of originating flights after the airways opened up again after 9-11. We were flying a 767 from EWR to LAX, and we had the added benefit of two of the relatively few Sky Marshalls that were on the payroll at that time. Things were tense, of course, and the flight was only about half full. Just past Denver we got a call from the back -- a passenger was having difficulty breathing. As is almost always the case, at least on a big airplane, there was a physician aboard who answered the call, and in a short time we were advised to get the passenger on the ground ASAP.

The new Denver airport by day, as it was back then.

All of us were on high alert for the possibility that this might not be what it seemed. The Sky Marshalls, of course, heard the call for assistance and no doubt stood ready, but they apparently kept themselves undercover. We immediately declared an emergency and asked for a turn back to KDEN. It took ATC a minute or so to arrange this, quite possibly due to some not inconsiderable coordinating and alerting, but we did get clearance and proceeded directly to KDEN, descending quickly as we went because it was but a short distance away. The stars were aligned for us since the weather was clear and a million. I thought I could "feel" the presence of some USAF fighters behind us, and I'm sure they were vectored back there, but they never made themselves known by sound or sight. And so it was that I landed for my first and only time at the new Denver airport. The passenger was taken off the airplane by the paramedics, and we quickly added a few gallons of fuel and departed once again for the golden west. I asked dispatch when I returned home whether the passenger made it, and was told that he or she (I don't recall which) did indeed come through OK.

On another occasion I got the call well into the descent into EWR from overseas. Again a physician responded (we have to be careful to ask for a "physician" over the PA, since there are many "Doctors" that are not medical men) and again the word was passed to us up front. This time it was dire -- we needed to get down as quickly as possible to save a life.

We were around 90 miles from EWR, and I asked for and got clearance to come in at the speed of heat, even below 10,000 feet. Ah, the benefits of Emergency Authority! We had all three pilots up front by then, so I assigned the third pilot the task of watching the TCAS like a hawk, while the two of us up front glued our eyes to the windshields as we blitzed along at 320 knots all the way to around the outer marker. Then it was speed brakes and gear down, and we wound up at 1000 AGL right on the numbers. We got clearance to land on the inside runway, 22R, and it was thus a quick taxi to our gate, where once again the medics were waiting. This one, too, had a happy ending, as I found out a day later in conversation with dispatch. This one wasn't a divert, strictly speaking, but it was a change of plans all the same.

At the gate at Newark after a quicker than usual arrival

Sometimes other things influence alternate selection. When we were flying the Airvan down to Puerto Rico we had to deal with the fact that not every airport down the chain of the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos had avgas. This is indeed a problem throughout that area, and not only in the aftermath of hurricanes. Availability of fuel is important, and can result in an unplanned vacation on one of the more remote islands while you wait for the weekly or monthly tramp steamer to deliver you a barrel of 100 low lead, at an astronomical price! In our case, we had to quick stop Providenciales rather than Grand Turk, since GTK had only jet fuel. (Ah, if only CAP had Caravans then, I would not be facing shoulder surgery in two weeks due to my torments getting into and out of the SlowBus!)

So...there is no substitute for complete and thorough planning, especially in selection of and diversion to alternates. And sometimes even the big guys come up short!

Happy Landings!
Tony Vallillo