Friday’s Denver to Omaha United flight 1279 landed at around 4:45 p.m. – but appears to have been on the ground for over an hour before making it to the gate. The flight landed during a tornado warning. While it sat on the tarmac, a tornado hit the ground at 5:08 p.m.
The airport was temporarily shut down to evaluate the extent of the storm’s impact. The main terminal remained intact, but general aviation on the eastern side of the airport suffered damage.
More from Eppley pic.twitter.com/0fplPNpUcr
— Sky360s (@Sky360s) April 26, 2024
This situation is really interesting. Normally, air traffic control will divert flights to alternate airports during a weather situation of this sort. Planes will be redirected away from the path of a tornado. At a minimum, I would have expected the United flight to be placed in a holding pattern.
It’s not surprising that ground handling was suspended. I’ve been inside of terminals during tornado warnings, when I’ve been directed to the center of the terminal and everyone was kept away from windows. This was a devastating tornado that touched down in Omaha.
Drone footage shows the aftermath after a tornado hit the neighborhood of Elkhorn in Omaha, Nebraska, United States
▪︎ 26 April 2024 ▪︎#Tornado #Elkhorn #Nebraska
Charles Peek pic.twitter.com/GKN0UgEXRl— DISASTER TRACKER (@DisasterTrackHQ) April 27, 2024
Here’s a passenger watching the tornado from inside their aircraft on the ground in Omaha:
⚡️ #AHORA | The path of a dangerous tornado seen from inside an airplane at Epply Airport in Omaha, United States.#viralvideo
pic.twitter.com/moWA8zEP8A— Shakeel Ahmed (@shakelahmad0331) April 26, 2024
One passenger on the United flight described being on board.
It was scary as I don’t know what,” the Omaha woman said. “I’m still pacing.”
It was a shock. Steele said she had just glanced out and saw that it had stopped raining. The sun had appeared. “The next minute it was a thunderstorm with lightning and hail bouncing off the plane,” she said. “The plane was rocking back and forth. It was absolutely crazy. That is when we saw the tornado.”
…“Realistically, I was praying at one point. We were all scared.”
I would have expected this flight to be diverted, if not at least first put into a holding pattern. But I don’t know what they knew or what their situation or alternatives were at the time so I’m loath to second guess. Fortunately everyone was safe.
(HT: Tom C)
I live in Omaha. There were numerous tornadoes that hit Friday afternoon. The most devastating was west of the city as it ripped thru a suburb, the worst this city has seen from a tornado in 50 years. Amazingly, there was no loss of life as most homes have shelters.
The tornado that hit Eppley Airfield came later and spun up quickly. Most of us had come out of the basements and were even outside assessing damage when the sirens went back off and our phones exploded with a new warning for downtown. That said, there were about a dozen flights that had already diverted to MCI and DSM. I looked at this United flight wondering if it had been circling…and amazingly it hadn’t. It more or less left and arrived on time. This was surprising to me because when it left Denver we were already mostly sheltered: I’m stunned it even left much less made the decision to land!
That tornado would have destroyed the United aircraft. Somehow, some way those passengers should have been brought into the terminal for shelter. An example of when “procedures” are the enemy of common sense.
American Airlines didn’t want people on the jet bridge during a thunderstorm. Accordingly, flight crews and passengers were “trapped” inside the aircraft even though the aircraft was at the gate.
Only in major hub airports where volume and congestion are a safety constraint , Air traffic control does not have the authority to stop flights from landing during weather. That is the job of the pilot in command and dispatcher as well as the airline.
Air traffic control never diverts flights for weather. If a flight wants to request a holding pattern instead of diverting they can hold all day as long as they have the fuel. The decision to divert rests with the pilot in command, dispatcher and airline.
Those are the federal regulations. The airline operated the flight because tornadoes are low probability events. If airlines cancelled and diverted for every tornado watch and warning, nobody would fly between March and September to places like Florida that get strong thunderstorms every afternoon.
It landed because weather was safe and legal to land. Tornado likely had not formed or was in the process of forming when it landed.
Ramp was closed for safety of ramp employees. Its not a great situation to be in but there are not many options.
If flight had cancelled or diverted earlier and tornado dissipated or did not develop, passengers would complain about being inconvenienced for no reason. As an airline, you cant win in these situations.
I’m not sure that there were any good choices for the pilot. The airplane was already on the ground before the tornado formed. People being in the jetway when a tornado hit would be more dangerous. Taking off with low fuel would be more dangerous. Diverting the flight because of conditions that could cause a tornado is very problematic.
Tough situation. The ground crew is sheltering, so the plane has to sit short of the terminal. Would it be acceptable to open the emergency exits and run into the terminal?
@Taha, that would create an uncontrolled situation with the very real possibility of people getting injured or killed. Remember the exits are quite high off of the ground. Deploying the slides in a time of high winds sounds extremely dangerous. The wind catches a slide and all of a sudden the people on it are tens of feet up in the air even if the wind isn’t at tornado level. Getting in the building by opening a door could also be very dangerous. High winds could tear the door off or slam it into a person. If there is glass, it could break and injure people. Is the door unlocked? There have not been reports of serious injury of passengers on a commercial passenger airplane of airline size on the ground from a tornado that I could find. Even if there are some, sheltering in the airplane, buckled in your seat, in brace position, is probably generally safer than any other alternative short of being in the internal part of the airport terminal.