Originally Posted by joepilot

We all know that what we read online and in the papers has to be taken with a large grain of salt. The story says that the aircraft was descending from 31,800 feet to 30,200 feet. This tells me that they were flying in an area of the world that uses meters for altimetry. This is normally a polar route, so they were probably in Magadan control airspace, which could put them closer to NRT than ANK, but in any case not over Alaska. I notice that the time is quoted as 10:55 AM local time, but I am absolutely sure that nobody on the airplane had his watch on actual local time for the place that they were over, so we don't know what the time reference really means. I think that the seven hours before landing estimate from the passenger may be overstating the time airborne after the turbulence encounter. If we ASSUME (yes, I know) that 10:55 AM local time means NRT time since that is the local time quoted for the takoff from IAD, then it was only 3:50 from the turbulence encounter to on the ground at NRT. It would certainly make sense to me to continue to NRT.

Joe