Flight radar KLM789 u-turn

[bonfiregal]

Is anyone tracking KL789 on flight radar now?

Scheduled to fly from Amsterdam to Sint Maarten. Flew halfway over the Atlantic and is now turning around and flying back to Amsterdam.

How strange!

Hopefully a technical issue that they can’t fix in St M, so would prefer to get back to base rather than risk the plane and crew being stuck on a tiny island.

Better that than a medical emergency. I’d be gutted if I was jetting off on my holidays though!

Yeah I’m just getting redirected via Google too.

However I also got a news story about a French plane from Paris diverting in last hour or so too. No reason given.

How do you find out about these sort of things on flight radar? I just randomly click on different flights but there thousands at any one time!

Cat 5 hurricane in the Caribbean

@strawlightyes that sounds likely. Hope all’s ok up there.

@zeddybrekhonestly, I was with my grandma and she was telling me how she used to live in an RAF base. I was telling her about the app and how interesting it is. We opened it up and that was the first plane I clicked on. Total fluke! I’ve never seen one not taking the regular scheduled path.

Oh wow what a huge coincidence!

Although I do feel so sorry for the passengers on board. Must be stressful for them, wishing them a safe journey back.

The Saint Marten forecast for the next 24 hours isn't great but not that bad...'sort of standard Caribbean, risk of thunderstorms but nothing horrendous. Unless there's been a very recent update only KLM are privvy to I'd be surprised if they have turned round for that.

In the absence of hard info at an initial guess I'd go with what @strawlight is thinking - a defect has popped up that allows continued flight but might be difficult to fix in St Marten, so a decision has been made to return to Amsterdam.

My first thought was that hurricane too. Just checked and it is now a cat 5 and too close to Sint Maarten for the pilots to want to fly anywhere near it.

Confirmed: Sint Maarten airport is closed because of the weather. I’d forgotten it was that time of year. I was in Cuba in 2006 when Katrina hit the USA, it didn’t hugely affect the weather where I was but you could just about see it in the distance and there was lots of local chatter.

Then they route round it..

Massive ETA ..that is a late call to say the least.

It's squawking 7700, which is a "general emergency" and rerouting back to Paris.
It's not going to be anything too bad though, if it's returning to Paris rather than landing somewhere closer.

On X and Bluesky you can follow FR24 which also sometimes puts up reasons for diversions when they know them. There is also an account called AIRLIVE.net which lists reasons for unusual tracks or 7700 squawks. Flight Emergency on X is really informative too.

My FlightRadar is not showing most tracked flights. It used to. It's on the web browser. Does anyone else have the same issue?

@MargaretThursday that's a different flight - an Air France 777 rather than KLM 787 then OP quoted.

For info if you do look at the Caribbean on flightradar you can see that some Long haul flights (e.g BA to Antigua and AF to Pointe a Pitre )have doglegged east of the hurricane.

Oops! I was following the other; obviously didn't check properly <goes to fetch reading glasses muttering about eyesight>

😂 Don't worry about it!

It's back now. I had the display at 110% and that lost the most tracked.

Hurricanes are huge and the feeder bands will bring rain, high winds and floods to islands hundreds of miles from its centre.

And Erin is a Category 5, which is described as "catastrophic" by the US National Hurricane Center. The winds are up to 160 kph.

Yep, sure, but nevertheless the KLM turnround is a.slight puzzle.

Normally airline operations departments are looking at these things several days ahead and if the forecast for St Marten itself was dire you'd have expected the flight to be cancelled well before the departure from Amsterdam.

Getting a fair way into the Atlantic crossing and then turning back is not without it's problems and will have been a waste of several dozens of tonnes of jet fuel,.plus incurred other costs..it's almost as if maybe the airport pulled the plug on any further arrivals with little to no notice.

Would be interesting to hear the full story but we probably never will.

maybe the airport pulled the plug on any further arrivals with little to no notice.

It probably did. Tropical storms can become hurricanes, and hurricanes increase in intensity, or dissipate, or change their paths, within a few hours.

Thanks so much for this, and thanks everyone for your insight! Im a total novice to all things air traffic but I find it really interesting and always check whatever’s flying over ahead. It just so happened that this was what was closest by at the time.

Glad there are others on here who share my interest!

Very much hurricane-related. Weather events can be hugely unpredictable - and certainly cause flights to be diverted mid-air. Assume other flights in the area may also had changes to their routes.
https://www.nhnieuws.nl/nieuws/351486/vlucht-naar-sint-maarten-omgekeerd-vanwege-naderende-orkaan?fbclid=IwY2xjawMNyrFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHnNeyA4vi9UXaRKuU97GQ6kv0gbU641qUB1m5yOI7Yu_ES3HQg48Xbr3A90h_aem_KbRKhxKou1tJc84dAwbGMA

Weather events can be hugely unpredictable - and certainly cause flights to be diverted mid-air.

Well that's true to a degree but having done a bit of flying between Europe and the Caribbean I'd still maintain what happened yesterday was slightly unusual...it's certainly one method of hurricane avoidance, perfectly safe but expensive.

Assume other flights in the area may also had changes to their routes

Looking at the tracks AF and BA took across the Atlantic to get into other islands I suspect their planners made the decision, based on the forecast to route around the back (eastern) edge of the hurricane prior to despatch.