Five miles short and hours late: Fog, over-fueling delay Seattle-bound flight
Heavy fog forced 17 Seattle-bound planes to divert elsewhere on Saturday morning, leaving passengers on some flights sitting on the tarmac for several hours at an airport tantalizingly close to Seattle–Tacoma International Airport.
Most of Saturday’s diversions went to Portland International Airport, said Sea-Tac airport spokesman Perry Cooper, but three flights landed at nearby King County International Airport, better known as Boeing Field (BFI), which is just five nautical miles away.
Two of those flights were operated by American Airlines.
American Flight 1623 was headed to Seattle from Chicago when it landed at BFI. Passengers were told that the plane would need to be refueled before it could continue on to Sea-Tac Airport.
But at BFI, “more fuel than necessary for the short flight to SEA was added,” said American Airlines spokesman Matt Miller, and that made the plane overweight. The captain told passengers that the plane couldn’t leave until the problem was fixed.
"We were all looking at each other 'Is he joking? Is this funny? Are we about to take off?' " Skye Stoury told KOMO News, "And then he kept talking and we were like 'Nope, this is really happening.' ”
Miller said the 150 passengers were given the option of remaining on the plane or deplaning at BFI. Ninety-three people chose to get off the plane.
“Of the 93 people who deplaned, 16 were taken to SEA via a bus arranged by American and 77 elected to make their own ground transportation arrangements,” said Miller.
The flight, with 57 remaining passengers onboard, plus all the baggage and cargo, arrived at SEA around 1:30 p.m., approximately three hours after its scheduled arrival.
American said at first that enough fuel had been burned off at Boeing Field before departure to allow a safe landing at Sea-Tac Airport, but Miller said defueling wasn’t necessary after all “because the payload was reduced after a number of passengers elected to deplane.”
The carrier issued an apology to passengers “for the inconvenience and the interruption to their travel plans,” said Miller, “We’ll be following up with passengers on that flight.”
American Airlines Flight 1489 from Dallas/Fort Worth to Seattle was also diverted to Boeing Field by the fog. That flight was on the ground at BFI for approximately two hours before making its way to Sea-Tac and did not require refueling.
Harriet Baskas is a Seattle-based airports and aviation writer and Paste BN Travel's "At the Airport" columnist. She occasionally contributes to Ben Mutzabaugh's Today in the Sky blog. Follow her at twitter.com/hbaskas.