re: Been waiting to land at MSY for 45 minutes circling the gulf

The owner of the company I worked for at the time, on 9/11 he was on a plane a couple hours into a flight leaving Paris to go the New York JFK. They turned the plane around and went back to Paris. He had his wife and two daughters with him and they didn’t get back to NOLA until a week later.

I asked him how he enjoyed his Europe vacation and he told me “never go to Europe alone with three woman”.

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An extra hour of flying on what is normally a little over 2 hour flight is significant. That is all I was trying to say.

I’m sure they weren’t on fumes but did burn much more fuel than normal.

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a flight is planned for enough fuel to get from point A to point B, plus a minimum required amount of reserve fuel, if the weather is iffy, contingency fuel is added, they do everything to do to try and get you to your destination, but sometimes it just doesn't work out and you have to divert to an alternate to get more fuel, the contingency fuel was for your holding near the airport, waiting for the weather to improve enough to make an approach to the airport and land. don't ever want to see another one of these at MSY(even though this was on takeoff,) for just trying to "carry the mail"

Thanks for the explanation.

I only fly a few times a year but I did once have a diversion to Austin on a flight from MSY to DAL.

A storm popped up quickly over Dallas and sat there after we had taken off. We circled somewhere over east Texas for about 30 minutes or so and ended up having to land in Austin and refuel before continuing.

U should act a fool to force them to land

You mean the ponchartrain. You ain't circling the Gulf from New Orleans

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This wouldn't have happened on Spirit.

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No, because the flight would have been canceled.

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flying with completely loaded tanks for a short flight waste money

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And I believe illegal. Planes aren’t allowed to land that heavy. They would have to dump the fuel, which is heavily regulated.

Fuel plus one hour so far. That's about right. Then enough to divert.