I see a plane decided to drop a drunken passenger off 200 miles north of its destination.
The funny thing is that it made the plane 4 hours late to its final destination in the Canary islands.
According to my cat, these planes typically fly at 550 knots, or roughly 10 miles a minute -- i.e. the drop off was made 20 minutes flying time away from its final destination...
Moreso, the tiny island of Porto Santo is only 10miles by 3 miles...I would question whether or not the pilot had ever landed there before, and exactly what sort of facilities they have to handle a large passenger aircraft.
So why not fly on for a further 20 minutes and land normally at Tenerife? Maybe I'm missing something but I really don't understand why a highly trained pilot would elect to land somewhere strange when another 20 minutes would put him on track to his destination?
The chappie was released without charge, and will be finding his own way back.
GilraenH
Pro
Drunk passengers are a security risk and the pilot clearly felt that it was worth the diversion. I doubt that the fact that he may or may not have landed there before would make any difference to him and his co-pilot's competence. I also suspect that if he didn't think he could land then he wouldn't have done! Seems a small diversion though and probably cost his company a shedload of money so it was probably not a decision he made lightly.
