More than a decade ago, a medical emergency while en route from London to New York’s JFK International broke my winning streak of never having to divert across the North Atlantic. A woman was suffering from an unknown cardiac issue. We brought her and more than 200 other passengers on board our Boeing 777 to Keflavik, Iceland. Although we had already communicated with our dispatch team to start the diversion ball rolling, a Boeing 757 crew on an Icelandair flight to the U.S. offered to call their operations desk ahead of our arrival.
The diversion procedures necessary to transit on a route 90 degrees offset from the track system over the North Atlantic can be tedious, but we accomplished the task without creating a traffic conflict, despite the fact my copilot was new to the airplane.
