Narrative:

Aircraft X; we were with abq center when he said expect a reroute into denver and I looked at my copilot and said; watch; they are going to put us on a 90 degree turn and run us through the weather; and that is exactly what happened. At this point; I became verbal and wanted a good reason why we can't stay in the clear 30 minutes outside of denver. ATC basically said denver just closed the southeast arrivals. I said something like you have got to be kidding me; if I had 10 choices; they gave us the 10th choice between two lines of weather with moderate turbulence and mountain wave and I again was displeased and wanted a good explanation. He said tmu (traffic management) is doing this to everyone; so I asked for the number; and talked with a [controller] who was in charge at the time. I have been with the airline for xx years and seeing more and more of this tmu routing that is always 4 to 6 hours behind schedule and dispatchers agreed. The reroute added 200 miles and 40 minutes and not one controller asks the question; 'can you do this' new route? I had plenty of fuel and that's why we did the route; but things would have been much different with minimum fuel. I am still trying to figure out why denver closed southeast arrivals because the weather we did deal with was nothing compared to what we saw on our radar in denver. Maybe we should add more flights.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air Carrier Captain reported ATC turning them through a very small area which had moderate turbulence and mountain waves due to surrounding weather.

Narrative: Aircraft X; we were with ABQ center when he said expect a reroute into Denver and I looked at my copilot and said; watch; they are going to put us on a 90 degree turn and run us through the weather; and that is exactly what happened. At this point; I became verbal and wanted a good reason why we can't stay in the clear 30 minutes outside of Denver. ATC basically said Denver just closed the southeast arrivals. I said something like you have got to be kidding me; if I had 10 choices; they gave us the 10th choice between two lines of weather with moderate turbulence and mountain wave and I again was displeased and wanted a good explanation. He said TMU (Traffic Management) is doing this to everyone; so I asked for the number; and talked with a [controller] who was in charge at the time. I have been with the airline for XX years and seeing more and more of this TMU routing that is always 4 to 6 hours behind schedule and dispatchers agreed. The reroute added 200 miles and 40 minutes and not one controller asks the question; 'Can you do this' new route? I had plenty of fuel and that's why we did the route; but things would have been much different with minimum fuel. I am still trying to figure out why Denver closed SE arrivals because the weather we did deal with was nothing compared to what we saw on our radar in Denver. Maybe we should add more flights.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.