Flight diverted? Seize the opportunity to discover a surprising new place

Plane Talk: Every pilot aims to land their aircraft safely, and every passenger should aim to make the most of unexpected touchdowns

Rainbow vision: Panorama from the viewing platform above the Rhine in Basel (Simon Calder)

Behind the cloisters of Basel’s grand cathedral, the Munster, stands a viewing platform that commands one of the finest urban views in Europe. Beneath you flows the Rhine, with handsome townhouses on the far bank and the pines of the Black Forest beyond.

Three hours earlier, when the Ryanair Boeing 737 had taken off from London Stansted, I had no idea I would be in Switzerland later that morning. My ticket asserted, and imagined, I was off to Baden-Baden, a lovely spa town in southwest Germany. But Baden-Baden is a fog-prone airport.

After carving gentle loops above the Rhine for a while, the captain set the controls for Basel – where I relished my good fortune in being able to explore Switzerland’s second city before heading north by train.

I wonder if any of the thousands of passengers who touched down in the wrong place on Sunday night felt as lucky?

As Storm Isha raged, dozens of flights were diverted after attempting and then abandoning landings. I have never witnessed so many “go arounds” (aborted landings) and diversions due to weather. Among the most extreme: Ryanair passengers on what is normally a half-hour hop from Manchester to Dublin ended up in Beauvais in northern France, and an easyJet domestic flight from Edinburgh to Bristol diverted to Paris Charles de Gaulle.

Heaven knows what the mood was on board those planes when the announcement was made. On the Ryanair aircraft, at least everyone had their passport (or a European national ID card). Pity the poor easyJet passenger who never imagined they would end up in France on a flight from Scotland to England. On arrival at CDG they could not leave the terminal and be placed in a hotel. They spent the night in the transit lounge.

“Don’t forget your passport” is a good plan even if you have no intention of leaving the UK.

Another good plan: stay flexible. I try to allow as much unencumbered time as possible after a flight. Partly that is because I am always on the lookout for an overbooking payout in the awkward event that the airline has sold too many tickets and all the passengers have shown up. But I also know from experience that I might not reach the destination shown on my ticket.

Knitting pattern? Paths of all the flights that were diverted on Sunday evening (Flightradar24)

More than once I have been staying in Mallorca with no clear plan on how I might leave that beautiful island. Instead, I have bowled up at the airport to buy a ticket. On one occasion the closest flight I could get to London was on Spanair to Manchester. Everyone else presumably cursed silently when the pilot announced the fog was too thick and we would instead land at Birmingham – but I was delighted to land 70 miles closer to my destination.

I was not so pleased to experience a rarity in “irregular operations”: a post-landing diversion. As I have previously written, my Emirates plane from Dubai landed normally (but late) at Heathrow. After remaining on the ground for an age, we were finally told by the embarrassed captain that all the passengers for the return flight were waiting for us at Gatwick. The operations team at Emirates HQ had calculated that the late arrival would mean the departure back to Dubai would fall foul of the Heathrow curfew.

By having all the passengers waiting at curfew-free Gatwick, there was no risk of being forced to remain on the ground overnight. Unfortunately the instruction to divert never reached the captain.

Even those of us with only cabin baggage were not allowed off. After having landed at the right airport an hour late, we were then all three hours late at the wrong airport.

The next attempt I made to fly on Ryanair from Stansted to Baden Baden also landed in the wrong country – only this time it was France, and the fine city of Strasbourg.

Germany can wait.