I'm not sure if this interests anyone here, but certainly this side of real world airline operations really fascinates me.
As many of you US residents will probably know, yesterday evening a huge line of thunderstorms developed from western Texas, stretching all the way across Kansas, eastern Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin towards the great lakes. This effectively put up a 1200 mile long wall right across the country causing some nice unusual flightplanning and all sorts of fun-and-games for the flight crews and air traffic controllers I'm sure.
AAL16 KSFO-KJFK went all the way up to Montana and North Dakota to go around:
AAL180 KLAX-KJFK went south:
AAL144 KLAX-KIAD was very lucky and managed to find a tiny tiny gap to squeeze through:
Unfortunately our friends over at Virgin American on VRD90 from KSFO also trying to go to KIAD were not as lucky and after a big avoiding maneuver eventually had to drop into our AA fortress at DFW for a top-up:
Even with the best weather programs, a side of flying that we don't normally encounter in FS!
