Comment by aredox
Stupid comment. Several flights had to be diverted because of the break-up, and anyone in flight at that time would be rightly concerned about barely-visible high-speed shrapnel showering a much larger area than where the visible debris are - especially when you are responsible for keeping your hundreds of passengers safe in a very unexpected situation with no rehearsed procedure to follow.
Nobody is saying it wasn’t prudent to divert.
It would have been impossible for the pilot to know if that debris was shortly in front of them and at co-altitude or extremely far in front of them and at a significantly higher altitude.
In this case it was almost certainly the latter. But the uncertainty alone was enough to warrant diverting.
> Stupid comment.
Aim higher on HN.