[flkiwi]

I feel like there was a "lost in translation" issue with the way they phrased the diversion. My assumption was that they didn't have enough fuel to attempt another landing in Tampa AND THEN to divert if it failed (which, given the deteriorating conditions, seems reasonable). The diversion is the least weird part of this story to me too.

Unless they became fixated on the causeway thinking it was the runway--I live here and that runway is not heavily used for commercial flights, so it might simply have been a familiarity issue even for someone regularly flying into TPA--I cannot for the life of me figure out why they ended up where they were. Just a bizarre situation, unless the weather was so bad that they got task saturated and didn't know what was happening.

I did wonder to myself whether they were lucky to be flying a MAX8 due to the power of the engines--an older plane might have taken longer to stop the descent.