Here's why everyone believes Edward Snowden was on AFL150

The Aviationist

Aeroflot 150 is a scheduled flight from Moscow, Russia, to Havana, Cuba. It is flown by an Airbus A330 and, as any scheduled commercial liner, unless something very special happens, it always takes the same route to Cuba. However, on Jul. 11 it flew a different route, a southern route that completely avoids the U.S. airspace (for the history of such flight in the last weeks take a look here). Furthermore, AFL150 is the same flight believed to be carrying the NSA leaker Edward Snowden a couple of weeks ago, when some journalist boarded the plane to find the accused spy’s seat empty.

Basically what the article is saying is that Aeroflot 150 made a deviation to its flightpath and completely avoided US airspace, and it has never done this before. Although it may have been because of bad weather the journalist believes its because Edward Snowden was on this flight.

Here's the normal flight:



And here's the flightpath it followed on July 7th:

reply to post by Stealthbomber


Could he have boarded a ship? I mean I understand flying is the fastest way, but what about maritime travel?

reply to post by Covertblack


There's probably no point, as long as the plane doesn't fly into US airspace there not really much they can do about it.

Unlikely to have boarded a ship, since that would mean leaving the airport and travelling to a port.

and even if he wasn't on that flight it could be part of setting up a pattern - what's the bet lots of flights to Cuba miss US airspace over the next few days or weeks??

reply to post by Stealthbomber


I'm gonna get a little snarky, just because I can.

Notice the route that it takes through US airspace. New York, Virginia, down along the Eastern Seaboard.

Anyone bother to check the weather the last couple of days for that area? Anybody? I did. I was in it.

Two days ago a front rolled through Kalamazoo Michigan, leading to some strong thunderstorms, and a severe weather threat (including a warning about potential tornado activity) in the area. It then proceeded to move, what's that word I'm looking for? Starts with an E.....Oh yeah! East! That's it!

Which would have put it right in that area that the flight comes down through yesterday. Even today the weather in Virginia sucked. There were a lot of thunderheads, and a storm that dropped so much rain, visibility was down to around 50-75 feet, and it stretched across a huge area of the state.

Correct me if I'm wrong but those two flight paths the OP has linked, are they not the same ?

reply to post by ThePeaceMaker


Don't look at the separate pictures, look at the top and bottom of one picture. The top part is the normal flight route, that it took on like the 7th. The bottom half of the picture is the flight it took yesterday, to avoid weather along the route in the US.

reply to post by Zaphod58


If you look at the sattelite, there's far stronger imagry directly over cuba when this flight LANDED, than anything near anywhere else for the hemisphere.
radar even, has the prior flights going directly through some of the tstorms we had along the NE US (I'm in jersey so yeah the rain and thunders been pretty crazy, the heat and humidity also)

reply to post by SlasherOfVeils


The front that came through Michigan was weaker than expected. But flights planning for their trips wouldn't have known that when they flight planned, so they diverted. You also have to look at the jetstream winds. If they were weak enough down south, or stronger up north, then they're going to divert south, and take a direct route.

Now while we speculate as to his location......we must know that the government knows right where he is. Right?

Now i feel like a complete (insert breaking T&C word here) yeah I see the two pics now I didn't scroll down sorry its only just gone 7am I'm at work and in sleep mode

reply to post by ThePeaceMaker


I did the same thing at first, so don't feel bad.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Yeah I know, I mentioned it could be bad weather in the post.

reply to post by Stealthbomber


I know, just the whole "that plane flew a different route, oh my God Snowden must be on it!" or whatever the conspiracy of the day is irritates the crap out of me. There are so many other reasons first, instead of jumping to that conclusion first, let's look at other logical possibilities that make sense first.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Yeah that's true, if it was from a normal news site I probably would have taken it with a grain of salt but I thought the people over at the aviationist might have known better than to post something like that but it seems in this case their not.

reply to post by Stealthbomber


Every once in awhile a story sneaks through over there that makes me shake my head, but not vet often. I think he tries to keep up with current topics and what people are talking about.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Ahk, we'll I guess it isn't all that bad I posted it here at least now we can rule that one out, thanks

Then, as The Washington Post reports, it turns out that "a number of westbound trans-Atlantic flights are today taking this unusual southern route, apparently for weather-related reasons." There's turbulence over Greenland, it seems.

There's also the point that even on this southerly route the jet will still pass through U.S. airspace for at least several hours.

www.npr.org...

I'm not usually a big fan of NPR, just because, but this was a pretty good one.