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San Luis Obispo bound passenger plane diverted to Bakersfield

October 13, 2024

By KAREN VELIE

The pilots of a passenger flight headed from Texas to San Luis Obispo discovered the planes flaps were not working on Wednesday, leading the pilots to divert the plane to Bakersfield, according to Simple Flying.

Without flaps, the pilots knew the landing speed would be accelerated. While San Luis Obispo’s runway is only 6,100 feet the runway in Bakersfield is 10,855 feet, making it a safer option for the difficult landing.

With emergency equipment on standby, the pilots landed the American Airlines Airbus in Bakersfield. The passengers were than transported to San Luis Obispo by bus.

 


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Could have been worse, Fresno or Oakland.


3

SLO’s 6,100′ runway -vs- Santa Maria’s 8,000′ runway is reason enough for airlines to switch airports to Santa Maria IMHO.


1

At least Boeing didn’t receive any more bad press.


1

This happened to my plane several years ago and it was diverted to Santa Maria. Several people on the plane were panicking, with one person running up and down the aisle screaming. The poor flight attendant could not calm them down so the police greeted them in Santa Maria.


15

Thiis is not the 1930s. Technical illiterates are too ignorant to comprehend how complicated modern aircraft actually are. Lots of things can go wrong. Safety is everything.


19

Last year in May American diverted our flight from SLO to Fresno and had several excuses, one of which was the runway is short for the plane size. They also said there was a mechanical issue, AND the visibility was poor with a low ceiling. The visibility was 10 miles as reported from the weather station at the airport. An airline employee later told me they were probably too late arriving SLO to land because ground crew had already been sent home. The plane was two hours late and attempting to land around 1030pm. I sued the airline in small claims court and they reimbursed for 100% of my additional expenses, including the $500 taxi ride from Fresno to SLO, plus hotel and breakfast in Fresno. My wife refused to take the flight the next day as they had mentioned the, likely bogus, mechanical issues.


7