An Alaska Airlines flight to Maui from Seattle was diverted to Honolulu on Wednesday. At about 250 miles prior to landing, the flight crew determined that there was an issue with brakes and decided to opt for a landing at Honolulu instead due to a much longer runway.
Maui has a 5,995 foot runway compared with Honolulu’s 12,312 foot length. Diversions on long over water flights to Hawaii is always fascinating and of course concerning.
Thankfully the plane landed safely without event at Honolulu International Airport. A replacement aircraft was dispatched, which then carried passengers to their destination on Maui. Amazingly, passengers were only 75 minutes late on arrival at OGG!
It’s especially impressive that Alaska managed this with such aplomb at airports located over 2,500 miles from their Seattle hub.
As you may recall, Honolulu International Airport was an alternate landing site for the Space Shuttle. The 39 year old reef runway at HNL, designated 8R/26L was built in 1977 as the first of two major runways ever constructed on underwater coral located offshore. At a cost of $80,000,000, it was built in part to help reduce noise caused by large aircraft departing Honolulu.
Aloha. Not to diminish the severity of the story, but my husband and I were wondering how does a captain discover, in the air, there’s a problem with the brakes? Is it like the “check engine light”? It seems more and more that airplanes have problems mid air. Referring back to the United Airlines flight recently that mid trip ceiling panels were dropping. Are we just being more careless pre-flight check? Thankfully the story ended positively.