Yesterday’s blizzard on the East coast created plenty of problems for airlines. With more than 4,000 flights cancelled on Thursday and another 1,200+ so far on Friday things are nasty all around. It also meant plenty of diversions for aircraft initially headed to Boston, JFK or Newark. As the afternoon (and JFK closure) rolled on the ramps at Washington-Dulles (Emirates, Aeroflot, Etihad, & more), Philadelphia, BWI, O’Hare and others started to see visitors. Philly ultimately had to decline additional diversions as it filled up. A Lufthansa flight went as far as Atlanta later in the evening to find a suitable diversion location.
This is what T5 looks like. Every gate spoken for and we are expecting more. Will be quite the shell game over there today pic.twitter.com/eFwirpJsqS
— Dan Kierna (@dkierna) January 5, 2018
Smaller airports got in on the fun, too. Stewart Airport in Newburgh, NY typically sees a handful of commercial flights daily, including a couple Norwegian 737 MAX8 flights to Europe. On Thursday it was one of the first diversion recipients with the Singapore Airlines A380 touching down.
Lookout #HudsonValley – the #A380 is in the house! ✈️ #SWF #SWFairport #Singapore #Airbus380 #Diversion #AvGeeks #AvGeek #Blizzard2018 pic.twitter.com/kqAOiZQUUs
— NewYorkStewartInt’lAirport. Wear a Face Covering. (@SWFairport) January 4, 2018
Those passengers had a 4 hour wait to deplane and the aircraft (9V-SKL) is still in Newburgh this morning as best I can tell.
Albany saw a Norwegian 787-9 from London come in from London. In many cases passengers hit with the diversions were carried by bus to New York City to complete their journey.

Two other Norwegian 787s also diverted to Stewart, delivering passengers from Copenhagen and Stockholm to New York state, though not to the intended airport.
And then there were the flights that didn’t complete the trip. At least five aircraft began their journey across the Atlantic Ocean late Thursday, only to turn around and return to their point of origin. Much like the now infamous ANA flight from LA to LA a couple weeks ago these passengers spent a few hours in the air only to find themselves back at the point of origin. The few I can see include:
Royal Air Maroc from Casablanca
A few more flight have abandoned trips across the Atlantic Ocean to JFK and returned to their departure airports. pic.twitter.com/58OGNMo9Qx
— Jason Rabinowitz (@AirlineFlyer) January 5, 2018
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic from London

Norwegian from Paris
Norwegian 7019, from Paris to JFK, also returning all the way back to Paris.
This blizzard has caused more (and crazy) diversions than I’ve ever seen. pic.twitter.com/x59DMTp7Q5
— Jason Rabinowitz (@AirlineFlyer) January 5, 2018
Iberia from Madrid
.@Iberia 6253 crossed half of the Atlantic Ocean before returning to Madrid because of the snow in New York. 8 hours 15 minutes MAD to MAD.
I assume @chrissyteigen and @johnlegend are on board the flight?https://t.co/2rANrOKshV pic.twitter.com/ABG8ZVl5IX
— Jason Rabinowitz (@AirlineFlyer) January 5, 2018
As for the Norwegian 787s that diverted to Stewart/Newburgh, they didn’t bother waiting in the US for their next journey. It appears that the airline got the crew up to SWF rather than to JFK and operated the return flights to Copenhagen and Stockholm empty. Norwegian’s fleet is stretched thin on the best of days and taking multiple 787s out of service for a couple days would wreak havoc on operations. Getting these back into the rotation quickly is key to the airline getting back on track as quickly as possible.

Update:
Also, I talked about this stuff with the guys from FR24.com later on Friday. Give it a listen/watch.
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So why did this storm have so many unusual diversions and aborted flights? Surely there was notice of the general weather pattern in time for European departures to change their mind. Or did it intensify or change track much more quickly than expected?
We talked about it more later this afternoon here: http://blog.wandr.me/2018/01/talking-blizzards-diversions-recovery-flightradar24/.
In short, JFK kept slipping the reopen time. So when the planes took off from Europe it was expected that the airport would be open. Once that slipped the returns and diversions grew.
But, also, many probably should’ve never dispatched in the first place based on the weather forecast.
I happened to see EK203 while it was in flight 05 Jan – definitely another ghost flight. It turned around near Ukraine, circled around DXB and then headed westward for a half hour or so before returning to DXB. I tracked it live for over an hour. Funny thing – it disappeared from the flightradar24 log soon after. Why would its flight be scrubbed from the record? The 06 Jan flight was canceled as well, but that seems even more weird – now two A380s of displaced passengers.
Interesting.
We’re seeing a few more on Saturday morning, too. LH400, LH410 and OS87 all went back because T1 is such a disaster (already too small for the number of flights it has scheduled) that the airport finally insisted to the airlines that there wouldn’t be time/space to unload if they arrived today. Such a mess.
And on Saturday another three flights left their airports in Europe, only to land a couple hours later after turning around because their terminal at JFK wouldn’t have a gate available. Ouch. http://blog.wandr.me/2018/01/divert-cancel-jfk-blizzard-debacle/?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=FB&utm_campaign=post