![This wasn’t a diversion. It’s just an old sight-seeing track the author flew a few years ago. But he uses it to illustrate an important point: The closest divert field with approaches, fuel, facilities and some level of civilization may be behind you. [Credit: Joseph Burnside]](https://flyingmag1.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/FLY0825-Aviation-Safety_B.jpeg?width=1269&height=1195)
The reason doesn’t really matter. Hopefully, nothing’s on fire, and the weather, at least where you are, is flyable without much drama.
But you need to land soon—before reaching your destination. You mostly didn’t anticipate this need, except to know ahead of time that it’s the rare flight that’s completed exactly as planned. No flight plan survives the second handoff.
If you're not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for? Subscribe today to get the issue as soon as it is released in either Print or Digital formats.
Subscribe Now
Yet, you didn’t figure in these specific circumstances, and now you need to divert. Where to go, and what will you find when you get there?
As important, will your divert field have the services you may need? Like a mechanic or 24-hour fuel? Is there food or a hotel nearby? How will you get to civilization once you land?
These are just some of the thoughts that may cross your mind when it becomes necessary to land short of your destination. Hopefully, it’s no more serious to the flight’s safety than you or a passenger needing an unscheduled potty break. It also could be that weather is your reason, and the only real criterion you want to meet is the nearest ILS.
How will you handle this unplanned diversion?
Head That Way
Once the decision to divert has been made, the first thing you should do is rather obvious: Turn toward your divert field. Importantly, your new destination may be behind you, perhaps in better weather. With my headwind karma, turning around would at least give me a tailwind.
If you’re VFR, you may not even need to tell ATC about your change, unless you’re receiving flight following services. If so, a simple “be advised” statement should suffice. Things can get more complicated if you’re IFR, and especially if the weather is part of the reason you’re diverting. If so, you’re likely not the only airplane thinking of going somewhere else.
Regardless, you need to let ATC know the new plan ASAP—which presumes you even have one. You also need to get started in that direction, which can be as simple as highlighting the new destination in your flight plan and doing whatever voodoo you do to go direct.
If you’re living right, the only thing you may need to do to reach your divert field is descend. But before you give up altitude, how about ensuring you won’t need it again on this flight? That gets to the reason you’re diverting. If you’ve got a sick engine, descending may be the last thing you want to do. With a bad engine, arriving over your divert airport with energy to spare, in the form of altitude, is a lot smarter than trying to hit a sweet spot descent rate that puts you at pattern altitude 5 miles out.
Staying as high as you can as long as you can gives you options, and options are something you always want when diverting. It also maximizes efficiency, so you likely have a higher true airspeed on the same fuel flow as if you were slower at a lower altitude. We’re probably talking a gallon or two in the scheme of things, but sometimes a gallon or two is what you need.
Or you can reduce power to better manage a tight fuel situation and still keep a healthy rate over the ground if you stay at altitude. I’ll use a phrase from my primary training: “until landing is assured.” That’s the test I’d apply on managing altitude if there was any question the powerplant would still be running when we got to the divert facility.
Planning Ahead
You should have done a lot of the legwork for your deviation before you ever took off. You do this by reviewing the route and the expected weather, and deciding what you’ll do if X happens, or if Y is below minimums, or if Airline Z dorks up and closes the destination runway for you.
For most of us, it’s rare to find an airport with runways too short to handle us. That said, wherever you land, you’ll need to take off again, so the facilities available at your divert field may be of great interest. For one thing, you always want to land with enough fuel to go get more, in case the truck won’t start or the credit card machine is down. A potty break is a potty break, but if you need/want a 24-hour facility, you may have to fly a bit farther than you want.
Without seeing your planned route laid out on a map, it can be hard to visualize some of the geography. For example, if I was over eastern Tennessee and needed to divert, I wouldn’t know how close to, say, Asheville, Tri-Cities, or Knoxville my flight plan would take me without reviewing the route on the map, before takeoff. As part of your route planning, where would a sudden need to divert present a worst-case scenario? Where would you go?
Nearest Blue Dot?
Earlier, I half-jokingly referred to the nearest ILS as my divert field. At the end of the day, that may not be a bad plan. If a quick stop to wait out some weather is your only real desire, popping into a towered airport might not be the perfect solution, but if I have the choice, I’m probably going to want the towered facility as my divert field.
A towered facility is more likely to have a choice of approaches and/or runways. It’s more likely to have maintenance facilities, a courtesy car, and/or a nearby hotel the FBO has an arrangement with. If my reason for diverting is either mechanical or medical, a towered facility also is more likely to have the resources I might need, including crash/fire/rescue equipment on the field.
A towered facility also is more likely to know you’re coming, thanks to ATC (with whom you’re talking, right?). If you’ve declared a bona fide emergency, you’ll probably own the runway and airspace until you’re on the ground. Try that at Cheap Gas Municipal, the closest field around, on a Saturday afternoon in the fall.
When you need to divert, make smart choices. Once you make the decision to divert and before you decide which way to go, did you figure in the headwind/tailwind you’ll encounter? If this is a medical/mechanical problem you’re dealing with, it might save time to turn downwind toward a more distant airport than buck a stiff headwind to a similar facility.
![[Credit: Joseph Burnside]](https://flyingmag1.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/FLY0825-Aviation-Safety_B-2.jpeg?width=609&height=1024)
Automation Makes This a Lot Easier
All pilots of a certain age remember the first time they flew with equipment sporting a button that brought up a list of the closest airports. It was almost magic. It was almost like we’d never have to consider divert fields any more in our planning—almost.
If your electronic flight bag (EFB) is highly configurable, you may be able to restrict the nearest airport list to, say, only hard-surface airports of 3,500 feet or more. You probably can just scroll through a list, tap the one you want, then tap again to go direct.
The same device might even load the ATIS and TRACON frequencies for you. Or, you can just zoom in and out, pan around, and then tap an airport and bring up all its data.
This feature first appeared in the August Issue 961 of the FLYING print edition.
