STEWART AIRPORT – Weather conditions at JFK Airport were worse than at Stewart International near Newburgh at mid-day on Thursday so a Singapore Airlines’ Airbus A380 jumbo jet diverted to the Hudson Valley facility.
Airline spokesman James Boyd said flight SQ26 from Singapore to JFK via
Frankfort, with 325 passengers and 24 crew members, landed safely at Stewart
at 1:12 p.m.
Boyd said Singapore Airlines arranged ground transportation for passengers.
Stewart has been an airport used for diverted flights for years, in fact, long before the April 1990 startup of regularly scheduled service.
Stewart has one of the longest runways on the east coast, at just under
12,000 feet. When NASA was operating its space shuttles, Stewart was certified
as an alternate landing strip, although it was never utilized for a diverted
shuttle.
Following the Singapore Airlines diversion, two Norwegian Airlines flights,
carrying nearly 300 passengers, landed at Stewart – one at 9 p.m. and
the other at 10 p.m. Both flights werre bound for JFK and all passengers
and crew members were shuttled to New York City.
It never snows in Singapore, but it does at JFK, where a foot of snow on Thursday
diverted this plane to Stewart
