7 Most Extreme Flight Diversions as Storm Isha Hits U.K. and Ireland
Photo Credit: A map showing a diverted flight during Storm Isha Flightradar24.com / Flightradar24.com
Skift Take
The ferocity of the storm meant planes had to travel much further than usual to find a safe diversion airport to land, with some domestic flights being rerouted internationally.
A surprise trip to Paris is usually the stuff of romance novels. However, for more than a thousand air passengers on Sunday, a very unexpected trip to the City of Love read more like a horror story.
Storm Isha battered northern Europe over the weekend, bringing gusts of wind up to 99mph, and causing serious headaches for airlines and airports. Alongside more than 100 flight cancellations, the treacherous conditions forced many pilots to make huge diversions to their regular routes.
Data provided to Skift by Flightradar24 shows how dozens of routine journeys were upended, with some passengers landing in a completely different country more than 1,000 miles from their expected destination.
Landing at an alternative location when the original destination airport is unavailable is standard procedure. In fact, before every flight takes off, pilots must review and assign a range of official diversionary airfields should things go awry en route.
However, the sheer size of Storm Isha and its focus on densely populated areas in the U.K. and Ireland meant th
