On 27 Oct, 00:01, george wrote:
On Oct 26, 11:40*am, Mike Ash wrote:

In article
,
*D Ramapriya wrote:

It's the accent upon the 100+ miles that gets me.
In a car world 100+ miles -is- a long way.
In an airliner at 400 knots that's 15 minutes.


I'm not a pilot but here are some quick calculations. With no tail or
head wind, the flight from SAN to MSP should've been a 3.5-hour, 1500-
mile journey. Assuming an hourly fuel burn of about 2.25 tons, they'd
have taken on about 8 tons plus an allowance for Wx en route and at
the destination in case of a divert.

I think that since the nearest alternative airport must've been some
way away (Rochester?), they'd have taken on board about 10 tons of
fuel. In flying past the destination for 150 miles, it'd have been a
20% extra journey by the time they landed back at MSP.

I'm not a pilot but I must beg to differ with you somewhat. A 300-mile
extra run on a scheduled 1500-mile journey doesn't sound as minor as
you're making it out to be. What if they'd encountered a stiff,
unexpected headwind enroute? It'd be interesting to note how close to
fumes they were when they actually landed.

Oh and another thing confirms my initial apprehension, that the pilots
were both on their laptops when all of this overflying happened (if
today's CNN newsitem is to be believed). It tells me that they were
taking it easy having keyed in the entire flight path into the FMS,
trusting the A320 to commence descent, etc., with something going
awfully amiss with either the FMS itself or the way data was entered
into it. Whatever the reason, the pilots' attention and focus do
appear to have been less than desirable.

Ramapriya