I am a member of FR24 and often monitor flights especially around Chiang Mai. I have an alert set for Mayday calls on my phone so as I can go watch the flight if I want.

 

Today I received the alert and checked on my phone. The flight was Kuwait KU920/KAC920 from Guangzhou to Dhaka. When I looked I noticed the flight was approaching Chiang Mai, which I thought a bit out of its flightpath so I looked at its track. It flew from Guangzhou to Bangladesh where it did a number of circles just below Cumilla and then headed towards Chiang Mai and it was somewhere along this path the Mayday was declared. I actually saw it fly past my house at around 13,000 feet and proceeded to land at Chiang Mai airport.

 

Does anyone know of any websites you can go look at Maydays and find what was the problem? I am assuming for some reason not allowed to land in Bangladesh so headed to CM and ran low on fuel, but only a wild guess.

 

 

Avherald does a good job reporting on unusual occurrences in airlines operations. 

I use their app. 

There was a large weather system with thunderstorms embedded arriving from the west (India) going over Bangladesh and Myanmar, TSRA (Thunderstorms and Rain) over Dhaka for about 3-4 hours when KU920 was about to arrive. They entered a hold, and then diverted to the next airport in the clear, which was in Vietnam.

 

I am still monitoring this occurrence as there is a possibility they may have landed below final fuel reserve - then The Aviation Herald (me) would report, otherwise this as a weather related diversion will be outside our coverage.

 

Servus, Simon

 

2 minutes ago, AustrianSimon said:

There was a large weather system with thunderstorms embedded arriving from the west (India) going over Bangladesh and Myanmar, TSRA (Thunderstorms and Rain) over Dhaka for about 3-4 hours when KU920 was about to arrive. They entered a hold, and then diverted to the next airport in the clear, which was in Vietnam.

 

I am still monitoring this occurrence as there is a possibility they may have landed below final fuel reserve - then The Aviation Herald (me) would report, otherwise this as a weather related diversion will be outside our coverage.

 

Servus, Simon

 

As I mentioned in my post i received a Mayday alert from FR24 and the flight was approaching Chiang Mai in Thailand where it finally landed in fine weather. I don't understand why diverted to Vietnam as many airports in Thailand much closer. If just weather related I doubt a mayday so I think it maybe a low fuel related.

1 hour ago, Dazinoz said:

As I mentioned in my post i received a Mayday alert from FR24 and the flight was approaching Chiang Mai in Thailand where it finally landed in fine weather. I don't understand why diverted to Vietnam as many airports in Thailand much closer. If just weather related I doubt a mayday so I think it maybe a low fuel related.

My fault, I wrote Vietnam instead of Thailand ... 

 

Mayday can be declared to indicate to ATC, that landing with final fuel reserve intact is no longer ensured if any further delays happen. The Mayday therefore does not necessarily mean that they landed below final fuel reserve, the Mayday should ensure that they maintain their final fuel reserve on board and in most cases that works out as the Mayday call immediately gives priority to the flight.

 

A Facebook post was just made about this flight landing in CM. Not much detail.

 

"No foreign tourists but Chiang Mai International Airport has seen its first foreign plane for over a year.

A Kuwait Airways 777-300ER on route from Guangzhou, China to Dhaka, Bangladesh diverted and landed at CNX 10 a.m. June 1 due to being unable to land at Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka due to weather.

The plane subsequently departed CNX at 1:05 p.m.

TIL - for some reason if you can't land in Bangladesh the closest alternative airport is apparently CNX. I presume with what's going on in Myanmar that may be why CNX became the best option.

https://www.facebook.com/hflightdotnet/posts/10165213522890397"

So is it just a divert or a proper full on mayday? 

11 hours ago, digbeth said:

So is it just a divert or a proper full on mayday? 

As far as I know you don't call a Mayday for a divert. A couple sources say they were low on fuel so declared a Mayday to ensure fast in arrival. I would like to know the facts of why Mayday called.

Planes are always fueled sufficiently to land at  an alternate airport in case for some reason they can't land at their destination airport. So fuel alone should not have resulted in declaring an emergency. Have you checked flyertalk?

 

Once they backtracked this far after the holding, might have not been able accept accept any further

delay thus the mayday.