Tuesday afternoon my wife and I stopped by MSP‘s aircraft viewing area and saw liveries not seen (often, ever?) at MSP: All Nippon Airways and Iberia. Delta dominates MSP flight, therefore anything else is quickly identified as unexpected.
Monday’s extremely nasty weather in Chicago resulted in a ground stop at O’Hare, diverting numerous flights to MSP, ANA‘s and Iberia‘s international flights among them. Upon arrival, passengers went through immigrations and customs and put up in hotels, while the planes parked on the tarmac.
The ANA plane was still parked on the tarmac when we arrived, but the Iberian plane began to taxi and took off southbound from runway 12R/30L. FlightRadar24 identified the flight as IB42, destination Madrid, apparently empty. The flight’s history shows a designation for Iberian relocation flights: intermittent dates from different origins flying a variety of aircraft. IB42 is definitely not your everyday flight designation.
I may need to occasionally check IB42’s history, check future flights and origins, see if there’s a pattern. And today’s flight IB342 from ORD to MAD? Canceled.
