Pilot makes emergency landing after finding airport closed

A spokesperson for Allegiant Air told MailOnline Travel: ‘Flight 426 with scheduled service from LAS to FAR on July 23, 2015 declared a fuel emergency upon arrival at Hector global Airport (FAR) and subsequently landed safely.

“There will be a window opening in about 20 minutes for landing”, the air traffic control tower operator said.

“Yeah, I don’t have 20 minutes”, the Allegiant pilot said.

Ya, I don’t have twenty minutes, replied the pilot.

The Fargo airport ground control gave the Allegiant Air pilot a phone number to call to request permission to land after the comment about declaring an emergency was reportedly uttered. “I am going to give them another three minutes”.

The Allegiant Air pilot also stated that he was told the Hector worldwide Airport runway would not be cleared for about 2o minutes.

Whether that was communicated to the Allegiant flight is unclear but complicating the problem is that the plane, Flight 426, was delayed nearly an hour in Las Vegas before departing.

Yet on Thursday, the Allegiant plane was circling the airport waiting for an opportunity to land.

“We don’t have … enough fuel to go anywhere else”.

The clip of radio transmissions between the tower and the pilot was posted to a popular aviation website, in a response to an article criticizing the number of emergency landings Allegiant makes.

The union says between 2011 and 2014, there has been a 600 percent increase in voluntary pilot resignations at Allegiant.

The tower then told the pilot his airline should have known about the closing.

“What we are asking for at the bargaining table are straightforward, industry standard policies that will ensure that pilots are compensated fairly, are able to keep up with changing safety regulations and improvements and that we are able to retain experienced pilots”. The pilot, sounding a bit flustered, responded, “Okay”.

The aircraft made a safe landing shortly after 1 pm. “We will provide details regarding the flight as soon as they are available”.

The airline could not immediately say how many passengers were on the flight.

“At this time, we are coordinating with the FAA and the airport to investigate all channels of communication regarding the flight and the circumstances leading to the declaration of emergency”, the email said. The FFA official said every commercial flight is required to carry an extra 45 minutes of fuel, which he said should have been enough to for the flight to divert to Grand Forks.

Cox said an airline’s dispatch office and the pilot have a responsibility to know if an aircraft’s destination is open or closed.

Notices about the Fargo airspace closing began in December, the FAA’s Cory said.