When a commercial jet schedules a flight plan, they must specify alternate airports, usually two are required especially when weather is predicted to be bad. Th

When a commercial jet schedules a flight plan, they must specify alternate airports, usually two are required especially when weather is predicted to be bad. The closest airport may not be the best one to divert to due to runway restrictions, normal capacity, and it must be far enough away for the possibility of it to not be affected by the same weather conditions that the destination is (which would be a reason to divert). Ft Lauderdale is 225nm away which is not far at all for a aircraft to divert to. Landings in which the approach is entirely over water is tricky and is done with instruments all of the time, typically ILS. This is normal for commercial flights in general, but should the localizer lose the glideslope, autopilot on the b737 defaults to the last mode it was in, which for the approach, they may have been performing a flight level change (FLC) mode down to the airports elevation which will cause a decent more rapid than the 3% guild slope, which allows the aircraft to descend into and catch the glideslope localizer.[note 1] At some point the gluideslope was lost (or was never caught to begin with) which to the pilots’ surprise, they likely encountered a “terrain, pull up” notice and recovered before the situation got worse. So why divert? Why not go around? Well they had to make that decision because they may not be able to divert if they made the decision to go around and try again due to fuel burn. They likely did not know why they captured the glideslope and then, all of a sudden, they were getting ready for a water landing. Was it the aircraft’s ILS or guideslope localized receiver? Due to the weather, they certainly could not do a visual approach, and there may not be sufficient RNAV points in the water on that approach to land there, so they diverted to an alternate where they know they could land visually if they absolutely had to. Making decisions while flying aircraft is a calculated process and may not be immediately obvious. It’s easy to see in hindsight how things could have turned out differently but pilots often have minutes or seconds to make a decision and they will always choose the one that results in a safe landing over a convenient one. Media that doesn’t understand how these decisions are made love to poke fun at these silly pilots and it does a huge public disservice. Note 1: this was explained to me from a friend who flew b737 for an airline