Mystery of Why Delta Air Flight to China Turned Back to Seattle More Than Half Way Through Flight

Paddle your own Kanoo ^ | 26 2821 | Mateusz Maszczynski

[AndyJackson]

it was the export version, not for domestic consumption.

[SgtHooper]

LOL!

[GOPJ]

A spy was onboard trying to escape...I>

Whoa - my first guess too...

[GOPJ]

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

Excellent example...

[Axenolith]

No, the high altitude compressor stalls take care of that...

[Jayster]

“ Rough ride with that tail wind?”

A tail wind does not equate to a rough ride. Pilots are always looking at winds aloft to find a tail wind which saves a lot on fuel in addition to an earlier arrival time.

[Bigbrown]

Absolutely smooth ride, my wife even asked me if the airplane was shuttering because we are going so fast. It’s all relative, with 180 knot tail wind the airplane is still flying in the same relative forward air speed. Big difference in ground speed however! I’ve only had one other flight in the last 15 years during a crossing where we kept the tail wind from takeoff to landing. Normally we get up around the Aleutian chain and there is what could be considered the doldrums were you have basically no wind.

[Bigbrown]

The jetstream varies based on Coriolis effect, surface friction and tropopause. From day-to-day it changes and our flight plan is fully automated to make sure that we receive the maximum benefit of the wind. While avoiding bad weather of course!

[Bigbrown]

Space is above us so best to keep the nose down! Geez, tough crowd!

[gas_dr]

I caught rides with tail winds over the Rockies and mountain wave action.
Was unpleasant to say the least.
But your point is well taken

[gas_dr]

Thanks for the info. You have the coolest job. Thanks for answering my simplistic and rookie questions.

[Jayster]

Yes, that is turbulence which is different than winds aloft but there can be some correlation.

Retired ATC here.

[Svartalfiar]

At what flight level do you start to get really fast jet stream winds? 180 knots seems incredible. Is the jet stream faster over the ocean?

It can vary but polar jet streams are usually in the 20-40M foot altitudes, and the subtropic jet streams tend to be between 30M and 50M feet. So with most flights staying around 35M feet, they try to hit those when possible to improve fuel consumption.

You can use this site: http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html to find airspeed (as well as other data) at various altitudes at any particular ground station. Pretty neat stuff I discovered in one of my aerospace engineering classes! We actually took several days' worth of data, and used some fancy matlab/mathematica programs to build graphs of average airspeed at various altitudes over DFW. If I can find it I'll post you a picture of what we compiled, if you want?

[gas_dr]

ATC
My respects. That’s a stress job.

[Wilhelm Tell]

It sounds neat. And I guess going into the jet stream you try to stay below the fastest wind and then it is a tossup between the headwind and the denser atmosphere. I imagine there are all kinds of calculations for things. If you have a picture of your project, please post the image. It sounds interesting.

[Svartalfiar]

You follow the jetstream. So planes flying the same direction will jump in it to use the boost, while planes flying against it will fly a more off-route to avoid it. If you look at flight times for two far apart east-west cities, notice one way is usually an hour or two longer than the same flight in the opposite direction.

And here you go, it's plotting a week of minimum/average/max windspeeds at altitudes up to 30Mm (10Mm is ~30M ft), over the FWD station.

[Candor7]

Mystery of Why Delta Air Flight to China Turned Back to Seattle More Than Half Way Through Flight>>>>>>>>>>>

Its quite simple.( Heavy Sarc.)

They discovered their cargo load was a collection of Hunter Biden’s paintings for which the Chinese Communists had paid over 2 Billion dollars to the Biden family mafia.

The quid pro quo was an exchange for Cheater Joe’s guarantee that the USA would stand down when Red China invades Taiwan.

When the pilots, both Trump supporters, discovered what cargo was on their air craft, they turned for home immediately.

While inspecting the cargo they also discovered the load of Hunter’s paintings included 200 Virginia Hams bound for Beijing, the dessicated corpse of Eric Swalwell’s Chinese House Maid that smelled of San Fran Nan’s medicinal street hashish, and a trash can with several pistols in it along with a couple of lap tops.

The plot against Taiwan thickens.Its time for Jamzu Bondo-OO7.

Meanwhile, new alternate shipping arrangements have been made for the cargo routed through Queensland , Australia.

[Wilhelm Tell]

That’s neat. I didn’t realize that there is so much wind under 20000 ft.

[Jayster]

Your job is also stressful.

As you know, everyone handles stress differently.

For me…. The busier it got, the quicker the day past and I liked it!