"Brien K. Meehan" wrote in message
oups.com...

The article conveniently neglects to mention that they departed 31
minutes late.

Also, I've listened to recordings of the ATC dialogue. There were
ample broadcasts by the tower and Center about the tower closing at
23:59 and regressing to Class E airspace. They mentioned a couple
times that they'd stay open for the Southwest flight's approach, but
they'd have to close if he went missed.

The confusing thing is that the Southwest flight is calling itself
2020, which is scheduled between MCO and PVD. SWA946 is the flight
between BWI and PVD. I don't know what the story is there. But the
dialogue between the tower and the flight goes like this:

00:02:07 SWA2020: Tower, Southwest, uh, 2020 is missed approach.
00:02:16 PVD TWR: Southwest 2020 is on the go, climb and maintain 2000.
00:02:20 SWA2020: 2000, Southwest 2020.

00:02:35 PVD TWR: Southwest 2020, say alternate.
00:02:37 SWA2020: Ah, we're gonna have to go to Baltimore.
00:02:39 PVD TWR: Understand, Baltimore.
00:02:40 SWA2020: That's affirmative.

00:02:53 SWA2020: Do you want us to switch to Center, sir?

00:03:03 PVD TWR: Southwest 2020, turn left heading 240, radar vectors
for Baltimore, climb and maintain two thousand five hundred.
00:03:12 SWA2020: Two thousand five hundred on the altitude, two four
zero heading, Southwest 2020.
00:03:16 PVD TWR: Southwest 2020, contact Boston Center on 124.85.
00:03:24 SWA2020: 124.85, thank you sir.

00:04:41 SWA2020: Tower, Southwest 2020.
00:04:43 PVD TWR: Southwest 2020, Providence Tower.
00:04:45 SWA2020: Yeah, you guys gonna close it up and go home?
00:04:47 PVD TWR: Affirmative, Southwest 2020.
00:04:48 SWA2020: Okay. Yeah, our misseds are set up to where we need
you guys to shoot 'em so, all right, thank you, good night.
00:04:53 PVD TWR: Roger.

00:05:25 PVD TWR: Attention all aircraft, Providence Tower is now
closed, class Charlie services are no longer available. Class Echo
airspace will be in effect until May 16, 2006 at 05:44 local. Good
night.

So yeah, the tower stayed open late, and the pilot believed he needed
the tower open to shoot the approach again, and diverted to his planned
alternate.


Very interesting. They had to return to BWI because PVD was below minimums,
not because the tower was abandoned or refused to stay open for them. Do
you know what approach they had missed?