Virgin Atlantic Airways (London) flight from London (Heathrow) to Newark yesterday had to divert to Hartford/Springfield (Bradley International Airport) due to bad weather at the destination. Despite the Bradley airport name, the passengers were forced to wait four hours for the clearance officers to be called in and to arrive so the passengers could deplane the aircraft. The airline apologized to the passengers but there needs to be a better way to handle situations like this. What do you think?
New Rule: Don’t call yourself an “international airport” if you do not have regular FIS inspectors on duty.
Read the full sorry story:
BDL calls itself international because of its occasional charters to Mexico and its daily services to YYZ and YUL (both airports have US Pre-clearance). Many other airports in the States do that, like Syracuse, Newburgh, but honestly, how many 747s does one see departing out of those airports?
BDL has seen transatlantic travel in the past with NWA to AMS and as well, Pan Am used to do the odd European charter back in the day.
It is, however, one of the alternate landing site for JFK. Concorde has been seen there, and one could see the odd BA 747 parked there now and again. As they have such limited international travel, I am not sure US Customs would want to keep a large full time staff there doing nothing most of the time.
Thank you very much for your valued input. I think what is needed (to avoid another terrible situation) is for marginal international airports (like BDL) to be designated either “resident FIS personnel” or “on demand FIS personnel”. Virgin Atlantic should have picked another alternative (assuming they had the crew time and fuel) where FIS (Customs) personnel are always on duty. Either way the industry needs to do better to avoid headlines like this. Thanks again.
Bruce