A major wind stom in Las Vegas kept planes from landing on Tuesday. American’s Chicago to Las Vegas flight 2254 made an unusal diversion – to Bullhead City, Arizona, an airport that lacks commercial service.
Las Vegas airport
With crew timing out, the flight cancelled. Checked bags were offloaded from the Airbus A321 and passengers could either wait for airline-provided buses to bring them to Las Vegas – or they could proceed on their own.
The wind storm is causing planes at Harry Reid Airport to abort their landings. pic.twitter.com/Z1cGziAv64
— Las Vegas Locally (@LasVegasLocally) July 1, 2025
Very odd diversion for AA Flight #2254 (ORD-LAS).
AA doesn’t operate at Bullhead City (IFP) and have no ground staff. IFP to LAS canceled. Crew timed out. What happened to the passengers? Dropped off in the middle of the desert? @xJonNYC @flightradar24 @garyleff pic.twitter.com/yX45Q5JBET
— June, June, Hannah. (@T0wanda) July 2, 2025
It was a disaster. We were eventually given our luggage once AA authorized Bullhead airport staff to unload. Told shuttle busses were coming from LV to pick us up but time unknown. Many of us pooled together and paid $100-$180/PP to get uber drivers to take us to LAS.
— Nick (@N1tchelous) July 2, 2025
Bullhead City, Arizona is 100 miles from Las Vegas, across the Colorado River from Laughlin, Nevada. But truthfully there aren’t going to be a lot of better options even flying a bit farther.
Credit: Laughlin/Bullhead Airport
Prescott Regional airport is going to be the closest to Laughlin offering commercial service, about 127 miles away and with United Express flights. The closest airport with American Eagle flights is going to be St. George, Utah, I think – perhaps 50 miles closer than Phoenix or Ontario.
American Airlines Airbus A321
The priority in a diversion is safety, considering available fuel resources and weather forecast. It’s always easier to land at an airport where the airline has service. When your own people are on the ground it’s going to be easier to assist passengers and coordinate with airport services. Under the circumstances though it doesn’t look reasonable to second guess the decision.
American Airlines Airbus A321
When a plane needs to get on the ground for fuel, outside the area where weather makes landing too much of a challenge, you’re going to have to pick from a limited range of options in this area. It’s unfortunate that crew were going to time out (the FAA and contractual agreements set maximum duty times which are considered safe). Here it seems the airline did the best it could for passengers – and they were in a place where they could organize things for themselves!
Frankly, there are many worse places to get stuck than Laughlin, Nevada.
Probably a new captain with little experience. This is the result of the big dei push. You get unqualified people that eventually make it to an important position
The crew clearly prioritized safety and regulations. In aviation, that’s exactly what everyone should want: decision-makers willing to lean away from danger, even if it disrupts plans. Hats off to them.
Interesting. Most airlines will divert to the “nearest suitable” airport in an emergency. Unless this flight was low on fuel or another malfunction, I would assume that they would divert to an airport having facilities to make the airport “suitable”. Obviously not! I’m betting that the pilots didn’t have this airport in the company EFB, either. The pilots would then have to break out the “brick” with “last resort approaches” contained therein. One might also think that the dispatcher/flight controller would have come up with a better solution and that the operations center would have been proactive. Oh, wait…this is Spir…umm…Fron…uh..er…American Airlines. What do you expect?
it is possible to follow all safety and regulations and still have enough contingency fuel to divert to an airport where there are services not just for passengers but also for the airline.
and the captain likely did not make this decision in isolation but had to get approval from his/her dispatcher – or at least discussed it with them.
years ago, I watched an AA DC10 divert to an airport where they had no international or widebody operations and then cancel it went just as poorly but on a larger scale.
Pool money for uber? Gross. I would get my own limo.
American has IFP on its ops spec and an approved diversion point. It has run charters into there.
IFP has regular commercial service from Sun Country every day on the 737. In fact yesterday and today there is a scheduled flight (casino charter). I knew this anyway but it took about 20 seconds to verify, which the author doesn’t always do.
In this situation at LAS, you also have to keep in mind everyone else was diverting too. So it overloads others which isn’t a great situation when now you have everyone heading to PHX or ONT or wherever and that starts causing congestion delays. PHX has flow control on clear days anymore.
They probably went to IFP thinking it was a gas n go and something happened that cause crew to time out.
I don’t see anywhere in the complaint about being stuck on the plane for an exceedingly long amount of time. It seems the passengers didn’t want to wait a couple hours at the terminal for the buses so they took their own devices to LAS. Why would they go to SGU or Prescott? These people weren’t connecting… they were bound for Vegas.
@walter Barry, every pilot goes through the same qualification requirements, your comment is nothing but racism.
Given the scope of number of diversions one has to wonder if St George, Palm Springs or Ontario were simply out of space.
The Captain may have been limited in his/her options. Do people expect ground handling crew and a bus to appear from nowhere? If they didn’t want to wait they had the option of taking matters into their own hands. Yes it sucks when something like this happens but airlines don’t control the weather.
Welp, folks… did you see the news… Diddy did just get acquitted, so let’s hope AA brought some baby oil, because now just about anywhere, yup, even Bullhead, is now ripe for a ‘freak-off…’
@Walter Barry – as the “unqualified” pilot landed a plane at an airport that, presumably, he, she, or they had no prior expeirence, I’d treat your comment with the contempt it deserves.
@Kiwi @BuiltInYorkshire — Welcome (back) to VFTW. We have a few resident bigots, like @Walter Barry, who still perpetuate the lies of ‘supremacy’ on here, sometimes overtly, other times, thinly-veiled (including this use of ‘DEI’ nowadays). I’d have to search for exactly who and when, but at one point, a bigot was outright using the n-word, hard-r, on here. While I’m a fan of free speech (even if it’s offensive), there’s still ‘a line.’ We’d do a lot better to build each other up than tear each other down, especially since it really never was a ‘culture’ war; it’s always been a class war, and unless you’re literally a centi-millionaire, you’re with the ‘rest of us,’ not the oligarchs.
It happen to me with American on March. In my case, the plane cannot arrived in DFW because a massive storm in Dallas/Austin Area, the plane arrived in Shreveport. Few people had the chance to leave the plane who had carry-on, the rest we stayed for almost 8hours, until the flight return to DFW.
Do we get bonus miles or whatever. NON!!
After a recent trip to Las Vegas for work, Bullhead City sounds like an improvement.
Took off from Vegas around 1:30 yesterday and it was a much bumpier take off than usual. We sat awaiting take off for quite a while as well, at least a half hour. Now I know why.
To @Walter Barry,
I will bet you are white male, with not much education, unhappy with your situation but unwilling to do anything about it except to whine.
God bless you!!
They should have sent it to St George UT (after almost flying right over it and me in Mesquite). Two different shuttle services run every two hours between St George and LAS. They could have easily added larger buses as well.
@Kiwi
You use it as an insult but I see it as being enlightened and having pattern recognition.
@BuiltInYorkshire
You should treat them as based on reality because they are.
@1990
Blah blah blah, I don’t care.
Pay no mind to @Walter Barry. He’s just an online troll spewing incendiary comments rooted in fear. I hope he gets the help he needs.
Under no circumstance should Pay for Ubers that were not needed or authorized. Patience is something some people never understood. Some people may Not agree but a Business does NOT allow customers to Run the Business. For every disruption and inflight altercation the Airlines need to start Charging the Individuals involved and put them on a Permanent NO FLY List and I do not give a Flyin F Who You are or Who You think You are. Tired of the drama, BS and theatrics of people who do not get their way.
@Parker, this is the sort of radicalized demographic that Gary has been developing on this page for years. While normally one would say disregard someone like @Walter Barry, this place is jokingly referred to as View From The Right Wing for a reason.
You people do realize that the Captain just doesn’t say “hey there’s an airport here, let’s land there.” There are conversations between dispatch, possibly ATC, and other operations to determine where that plane is going to go. Moreover, when the Captain files a flight plan he/she indicates his/her diversion airport. That airport may or may not be used depending upon any number of factors, for example if because of multiple diversions that airport can no longer take additional planes. Out in the desert there’s not a lot of options for a big airport.
AA2254 is flown on an A321.
There are three airports in the Las Vegas Metro Area. Harry Reid is a Class B with lots of runway and it takes 15 minutes to taxi from ramp to runway. KVGT has too short a runway for that a/c. KHND however has a 6500ft runway, but it was scorching hot so density altitude requires more landing room than usual (5500ft-6200ft). KIFP has an 8500ft runway, and as someone already says has regular (tour) B37 landings there.
On the other hand they’d just flown into LAS from Chicago so less fuel weight.
Still they’re all alive and the flight deck crew didn’t risk an unsafe landing. That’s good on them. Sure it’s inconvenient to wait for the buses, and the “lounge” at KIFP won’t hold more than 10 people… and nobody wants to stand in the Nevada sun and wait an unknown amount of time.
The airspace after exiting LAS Class-B is not monitored for VFR flights, and they hadn’t filed an IFR flight plan for KIFP, so they probably said “so long” to Los Angeles Center before they hit Las Vegas Approach, and then leaving Vegas there’s no point in going up just to come down, so my guesses all point to VFR… so they’d be flying without ATC until they hit Bullhead City/Laughlin’s Class-D.
The important thing is this was a diversion, not an accident or an incident. It did inconvenience the pax, but at least they’re not stuck on a desert island or Greenland or Newfoundland with no hotels 100mi away!
As usual, this post seems overly dramatic and anti-AA. IFP is NOT an airport with “no staff” – it is an airport with staff – just not AA. SY has operations into IFP on a daily basis so clearly there is “staff” who are able to service an aircraft. The airport does not lack “commercial service” as evidenced by regular SY flights which are clearly commercial service – maybe not scheduled service but there is commercial jet service on a regular basis and the equipment to deal with same. As far as describing it as a “tiny desert airport” that is a bit rich, isnt it? LAS is a desert airport. IFP has an 8500 foot runway so again, really more of a clickbait description than reality. And finally, as someone else noted, the AA captain didnt just look out the window and say “hey, that looks like a nice runway, lets land there!” Hardly. Dispatch and the captain make the call based on fuel, resources etc. Other diversion points may have already had AA aircraft on the ground, be too far given fuel, had similar WX conditions possible as LAS etc.
@Walter Barry, can we agree that you should at least know whether the pilot was a DEI hire instead of making an assumption with no factual basis whatsoever before you claim that you are “enlightened” and possess “pattern recognition”? You don’t even know the facts so there is no pattern for you to recognize, enlightened as you may think you are. You said nothing that is based on “reality” — you made an assumption.
Look at a map!
We are the only major airport for hundreds of miles around. Planes are required to carry enough fuel to divert, they are not required to carry enough fuel to divert to desirable airports. And how much load is going to be dumped on those other airports–do they have the capacity to take it??
I see St. George mentioned–yes, it operates commercial traffic and there’s a regular bus shuttle to Las Vegas. But think of why that bus shuttle exists! It’s because the airport there is small, limited capacity for planes, limited capacity for passengers. People generally go by road to Las Vegas.
I am not the least surprised that a plane ended up in nowhereville.
Romey and NedsKid are right, among others. You could change a very few words in the headline and sum it more accurately, but less colorfully for the clicks:
“LAS Weather Forces Multiple Diversions Including Tiny Desert Airport—Some Passengers Pay Hundreds To Leave Sooner Than 90 Minutes on Buses”
Also, it would have been possible to pay $30 round trip via small-town taxi to get in a few hands of old-school, Reno-rules blackjack at the Riverside Casino in Laughlin, NV, and still meet the buses back at IFP on time.
Bonus trivia: IFP stands for nothng more or less than International Fun Point.
Gustnados ! Have witnessed the heavy wind at LAS in the form of 2 story semitransparent tornadoes. Vegas seems prone to big wind and I happily avoid. This diversion was minor and I doubt other than saving a couple bucks on slots no one was inconvenienced.
As to Walter the troll get back to your alter ego at lalf. You’re boring.
@Parker — Ya gotta troll the trolls. Be the bigger bully. Build a coalition and ‘take ‘em out,’ I say. They usually back down once you fight back. And if not, then, more fun. Let’s go!
@Uncle Jeff — I had you wrong the whole time. Here I was mocking you as ‘Uncle Tom,’ yet, you’re ‘based,’ as the kids say these days. Preach! Louder, for the people in the back!
@Walter Barry
“. This is the result of the big dei push.”
Geez – you really are a piece of work – you think DEI hires have lower standards? You want to throw a seig heil in there too?
@Walter Barry — So, what’s the ‘master plan,’ oh enlightened one? Is it more of these ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ (or, ‘Alligator Auschwitz,’ as some are calling it, which is not over-reacting or diminishing prior genocides, because realistically, that place is indeed an American ‘concentration camp,’ and once a hurricane hit, it’ll become more of a ‘death camp.’) Are the so-called ‘home-growns’ (as in, anyone who merely ‘disagrees’ with Dear Leader) next? Like, do fill us in, ‘bud.’
Also, where’d @Andy S, @Mantis, @Mike P, @Michael Mainello, and the others end up? Guys, if you aren’t all the same person, please do come back and ‘enlighten’ us as well.
A white male pilot could have landed this plane. It’s all DEI hiring that is causing the airlines big problems.
First of all, anyone that is local to LV or is following the weather knows how bad the wind was yesterday. It knocked out power for many people and caused significant damage. Therefore, the diversion was well founded. As you all know, these decisions are not made lightly and AA would much rather have that plane at LAS. Also the entitled passenger that posted on X that is was a “disaster” really needs to get over himself.
As for Bullhead City, yes it doesn’t have scheduled commercial air service but is a fully functioning airport. I’ve flown in and out of there on Caesars Air charters and the planes, security and ground ops were all handled well. In the scheme of things this was a minor inconvenience and was done to avoid potentially a much bigger problem. The passengers need to get over their entitlement and appreciate the decisions that were made to ensure their safety.
@WalterBarry- get psychiatric help soon, you poor soul.
@Kiwi and other naive people out there… DEI absolutely does exist and the best, brightest and most experienced certainly do get passed over in favor of racial/gender quotas. United openly admitted this. If one NBA team had a 50 percent white quota, would this improve that basketball team’s outcome? Airlines also get threatened with lawsuits if the DEI hire has any issues in training. They get pushed through because of this. You are very naive to think otherwise. I know people who work in hiring. This is exactly how it is.
@WalterBarry – even a new captain would have been hired years ago, long before DEI was a ‘thing’. On AA it typically takes 10 -15 years in the right seat to advance to the left seat.
@WalterBarry & the others — Is it going to be like Logan’s Run, where everyone’s ‘white,’ and we only get to live to the age of 30? C’mon, give us the teaser-trailer on your ‘vision’ for the future.
Actually, DEI does mean they didn’t have the same qualifications. Did you miss the story about ATC official who sold ATc test answers to minorities only? I guess you skipped that story?
Barry did make a statement not back up by real evidence.
Walter Barry is a sad soul needing to make such ridiculous comments. You are the problem in the world.
there are a number of factually incorrect statements in the comments section.
first, Bullhead City airport is tower controlled until 6 pm which is when this flight diverted. even regardless of whether there is a tower or not, US large commercial airlines like AA operate under part 121 rules which are 100% IFR. There is no such thing as saying “goodbye to ATC” and flying VFR, even to a non tower controlled airport.
second, dispatchers at large US airlines typically file flight plans and do it long before pilots step on the aircraft they are going to fly. Pilots and dispatchers work closely together but dispatchers have access to the technology and efficiency to dispatch scheduled flights – including selecting alternates – better than pilots do.
Pilots can request a change to anything in the flight plan including choosing a different alternate enroute.
third, airline ground operations usually have some input regarding diversions just because there are passengers that have to be handled and operations and passenger service people might say to NOT divert a flight to an airport where the airline has operations but it is highly unlikely that they would tell a flight to divert to an offline station rather than land at a station the company serves and just wait.
the chances are high that the flight did not have enough fuel for a more distant alternate or the pilots and dispatcher thought they could just do a quick refuel and return but the crew also should have known their status regarding time remaining on duty before they diverted.
and since the flight landed at IFP at 3.11 pm, the crew had likely flown at least one more flight – perhaps from the eastern US – to be running out of duty time by 3 pm even on the west coast.
and the crew didn’t just walk off the airplane to a waiting van to take them to a pre-planned airport. They didn’t want this either.
@Tim Dunn — Never change, Tim. Thank you for bringin’ us back!
“Give ’em a lil’ preview of the remix…”
Gary, nice job putting the situation in perspective. A time critical diversion like this has many elements that passing a judgement on the crew is foolish and profoundly so by people who have never been in the hot seat themselves.
Walter Barry, you did a wonderful job of putting in perspective how truly ignorant and uniformed the reactionary “anti DEI” argument can be. Well done.
@Timothy Plumley — What’a you mean by ‘you people’??
(You didn’t explicitly say it, but by your comment, you implied it.)
“It wasn’t me..”
Im not aware of their rules about where they are allowed to land but surely there could have been a better airport. But thankfully they didn’t keep you inside the airplane for like 6 hours.
there is a regular clark county bus from Laughlin to Las Vegas
Well, I headed for Las Vegas
Only made it out to Needles
– Three Dog Night
Walter Barrys have been around since humans learned to hit each other over the head. Walter Barrys are incorrect, and on the wrong side of history. And probably underemployed, overweight and ill-prepared for retirement. Pity. lol (I can make assumptions and recognize patterns, too!)
@NPS-CA
Of course we know this fact to be true. The DCA crashed was caused by the incompetent female nepo dei hire. Many such cases.
@Dave
Not anymore, most major airline captains were hired after Covid.
@JamesC
I’m the most sane awake person here.
Probably not enough fuel to divert to Phoenix. Ontario, California is almost 100 miles closer. There are also a lot of other airports in California closer than Phoenix such as Palm Springs. In fact LAX is about 50 miles closer to LAS by air. Little wonder that Southern California money built Las Vegas.
Bullhead City was a good place to divert to. St. George is significantly farther. The airplane did a few loops before LAS which probably made it so diverting to farther away airports did not leave enough reserve fuel. Of course, in hindsight, diverting to St. George before getting to LAS would have been better. St. George has a longer main runway than Bullhead City.
Bullhead City! Great. Real America! I’ve actually been there. Has @ 1990?