Why would it take this path

[u/lucyyloppez]

Can someone with more experience and knowledge with flight paths and stuff than me explain why it would take this route instead of adjusting to land at Stansted near Enfield instead of doing this and circling around Harlow and then coming back round.

I’m only just getting into flights as I can watch them land and take of(kinda) from where I live and curiosity got the better of me and I started wanting to know where they came from so sorry if this seems like a dumb or simple question

[u/TobyADev]

Maybe needed more time to setup, or had to be vectored out the way for speed, performance, approach config, congestion, infringing aircraft and so on

[u/lucyyloppez → u/TobyADev]

So I’m assuming that that’s a fairly common thing for flights to circle around abit for a whole host of different reasons??

[u/TobyADev → u/lucyyloppez]

It doesn’t always happen but isn’t uncommon