Life imitated art over Maine in mid-October when a first officer on a TUI Airways Boeing 787 was felled by suspected food poisoning. The aircraft, which was on a charter flight from Doncaster in the U.K. to Melbourne, Florida (used by some holiday charters as a cheaper alternative to Orlando), had only two pilots for the 8.5-hour trip so procedures demanded a diversion. The captain, with a flight attendant flying shotgun, headed for Bangor, Maine, with controllers so anxious to help one offered to read the captain the ATIS. He declined, having already dialed it in.
The landing was uneventful, the FO was taken to a local hospital and accommodations were found for 300 surprise visitors in the city of 31,000, which has the runway for a heavy jet thanks to the former Strategic Air Command base on the outskirts of town. TUI operates one flight a day to Melbourne from a different city in the U.K. The folks on the Birmingham flight the next day also made a stop in Bangor to drop off a fresh crew to get the Doncaster flight on its way.
