Alaska 14 (SEA-EWR) Interesting Routing

[Len90]

I noticed this crazy routing when I was doing my daily check to see which registration the Alaska flight 14 will be. Tonight it is N468AS operating the flight. There is a pretty strong storm making its way across the country, but I have rarely ever seen a plane take such a long routing to avoid flying through a storm at 35,000 feet. http://flightaware.com/live/flight/ASA14/history/20140905/2230Z/KSEA/KEWR

Anybody else find this interesting?

[lijk604]

With the northwest "arrival gates" into EWR blocked off due to the storm, NY Center was in a SWAP (Severe Weather Avoidance Program). This resulted in major delays for aircraft inbound to the NY Area. To avoid the delays you could file an alternate route...it would take longer to fly, but the extra 45 minutes in the air would well outweigh the 180 minute gate delays to take the regular "preferred ATC" route. Looks like they left only 14 mins late and the flying time was about 50 extra minutes. 64 min delay beats 180 min delay every day in my book!

[Len90]

Interesting that they did this. I thought for slot controlled airports you really couldn't do something like that. I guess I was wrong!

[RWB]

I noticed this crazy routing when I was doing my daily check to see which registration the Alaska flight 14 will be. Tonight it is N468AS operating the flight.
What site do you find the tail number on? they sent -700s here last two days and tried looking up the 'Timbers' 607AS but found no info anywhere?

[Len90]

The -900 ERs will almost always show up on flightradar24 or planefinder without an issue. The -800s I sometimes get lucky when tracking the flight on flightradar24.com. A plane will show up in front of the one marked for the flight with a label NOCALLSIGN. Click it and it will have the information for the plane registration.

[Mateo]

Interesting that they did this. I thought for slot controlled airports you really couldn't do something like that. I guess I was wrong!Slot controlled is only for scheduling purposes. Alaska's "slot" is to have an arrival scheduled during the XX:00 hour of the day (and a departure at usually [X+1]:00). Where it comes from and how it gets to Newark is the airline's problem.

[RWB]

The -900 ERs will almost always show up on flightradar24 or planefinder without an issue. The -800s I sometimes get lucky when tracking the flight on flightradar24.com. A plane will show up in front of the one marked for the flight with a label NOCALLSIGN. Click it and it will have the information for the plane registration.
Thanks, I'll give it a try.

[Len90]

Slot controlled is only for scheduling purposes. Alaska's "slot" is to have an arrival scheduled during the XX:00 hour of the day (and a departure at usually [X+1]:00). Where it comes from and how it gets to Newark is the airline's problem.

Thanks for that information!