Pacific ETOPS & Midway Atoll (PMDY)
Keeping a diversion airport in the middle of the Pacific
Trans-Pacific ETOPS-180 operations depend on a thin chain of diversion airports, and Midway Atoll’s Henderson Field (PMDY) is the only one in the central Pacific. With Russian airspace closed and the Aleutian alternates regularly below minimums, losing PMDY would leave holes in the ocean that cannot be closed under current FAA guidance. ADF filed a formal comment on FAA Docket 2026-8185 on 2026-09-21 urging the agency to keep the field available as an ETOPS alternate.
Why Midway matters
Under FAA rules a twin-engine airliner more than 60 minutes from an adequate airport operates under ETOPS, and AC 120-42B directs operators to plan for a maximum diversion of 180 minutes or less. With Russian airspace closed to U.S. carriers, every flight between the mainland or Hawaii and Asia depends on a small set of mid-ocean and Aleutian airports to stay inside that limit — and PMDY is the one in the middle.
The alternatives are unreliable by comparison. Eareckson Air Station (PASY) is historically below landing minimums as much as 74% of the time in summer, Cold Bay (PACD) about 28%, and northern Japan 22–44%; Kamchatka’s 29 active volcanoes, routine NOTAM’d weather-broadcast outages and Russian military airway closures compound it. Midway runs the other way: a 20-year lookback puts Henderson Field below alternate minimums only 3.7% of the time, and below landing minimums 1.9%.
A single point of failure
Without PMDY, Pacific ETOPS coverage rests on four airports, and the loss of any one of them — PASY above all — opens gaps that cannot be closed under ETOPS-180. Covering them would require ETOPS-207 or ETOPS-225 operations contrary to FAA guidance, plus added equipment cost for carriers. The field is not theoretical either: the docket records 11 diversions into PMDY between 2003 and 2021, at least four of them Part 121 airline flights carrying more than 800 passengers and crew combined.
ADF’s comment was filed on Regulations.gov on 2026-09-21 (tracking mub-hu65-f8w3) and is pending agency review. ADF has offered to continue the discussion with the FAA on PMDY, ETOPS and operational control.