What to do in the first ten minutes of a diversion

Diversions are rarely made worse by the technical situation. They are made worse by parallel tasks being run in sequence, by information reaching people late, and by nobody having authority to spend money at three in the morning. The following is the sequence we run, and it works whether or not we are the ones running it.

Minute zero to three

• Establish one owner for the event. Every subsequent decision routes through that person. Two people coordinating in parallel is the most common cause of duplicated hotel bookings and contradictory instructions to the station.
• Confirm the diversion airport's actual operating hours and whether it is currently open. A field that is technically suitable but closed until 06:00 changes the entire plan.
• Get the handling and fuel request in before anything else. These have the longest lead time at an unplanned station and everything else can be arranged while they run.

Minute three to ten

• File the landing permit if one is required, flagged with the reason for diversion. Most authorities treat a genuine diversion differently from a scheduled request, but only if you tell them it is one.
• Start passenger accommodation in parallel, not after. Rooms near an unplanned airport go quickly, and it costs nothing to hold and release them.
• Assess crew duty immediately. If the crew will be out of hours, the recovery plan is fundamentally different and the earlier that is known the better.
• If it is technical, get the engineer moving before diagnosing precisely. Travel time dominates; the specifics can be relayed en route.

After the first hour

Once the aircraft, crew and passengers are stable, the work shifts to recovery: revised permits for the continuation, a new flight plan, slot coordination at the original destination and, where necessary, replacement crew. Running these in parallel with the immediate response is what separates a six-hour event from a twenty-four-hour one.