EDUC8-or
Well-Known Member
On arrival today we were given some serious delay vectors and a reroute due to traffic from the center that added almost 200 miles to our flight plan. Apparently there was some sort of computer glitch that caused the problem. The controller didn't say in so many words, but you could sense he was irritated with fact that he is encouraged to give vectors instead of assign holding because once holding has been assigned a delay goes down on the airport.
We didn't have an alternate and the flight was only scheduled to be 200 miles, so the distance was now doubled. I told the controller to give us holding so we could be close to an airport of our choice in case a diversion was necessary due to fuel issues. After that he had holding for about 5 other airplanes that were getting vectored all over the East Coast.
So my question is this, why all the delay vectors instead of holding? It's pretty common to see in some major airports. I know often the vectors are minimal, but sometimes we might as well hold.
We didn't have an alternate and the flight was only scheduled to be 200 miles, so the distance was now doubled. I told the controller to give us holding so we could be close to an airport of our choice in case a diversion was necessary due to fuel issues. After that he had holding for about 5 other airplanes that were getting vectored all over the East Coast.
So my question is this, why all the delay vectors instead of holding? It's pretty common to see in some major airports. I know often the vectors are minimal, but sometimes we might as well hold.