ANA Plane from LA to TOkyo turns back due to wrong passenger boarded in LA

Inquitus

I have done a fair bit of googling on this and can find no reason why a plane would turn around 4 hours into an 11 hour flight to take one misboarded passenger back to the departure airport. I searched news articles, pprune etc. no one was able to give an answer as to why they did not continue to Tokyo and then resolve the issue with the one passenger rather than put out the remaining few hundred passengers out and put them through a minimum 20 hours flying for an 11 hour flight.

Can anyone on here advise what thinking would cause this?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/27/flight-from-la-to-tokyo-turns-around-after-four-hours-due-to-unauthorised-person

Thanks in advance for any explanation.

Obv this would have happened unbeknownst to us but for the fact there was a famous celebrity on board live tweeting the whole thing.

Stephen Strange

I would imagine the US would view it as a major security risk and that would be the main reason for it.

circular flexing

Or the passenger didn't have the correct papers to enter/transit through Japan.

Stephen Strange

circular flexing wrote: »

Or the passenger didn't have the correct papers to enter/transit through Japan.

Quite possibly, although unlikely (the fine for bringing such a passenger would be minute compared to the costs of turning around), I had misread it as a tokyo-LA flight, not the other way around.

mel.b

circular flexing wrote: »

Or the passenger didn't have the correct papers to enter/transit through Japan.

The article I read about it was that two brothers with very similar names boarded the same flight -one was meant to fly with ANA and the other with another airline. So likely to have the correct visas to travel. however it does show that the boarding pass scanners are pretty much useless if it didn't alert that the passenger wasn't meant to be on the flight and that the passenger numbers didn't match the manifest. An if someone checked in and then didn't board which would make the numbers match, there'd be a big search for their luggage before the plane even departed.

Doltanian

Back around 10 years ago in Cork I decided to put my watch one hour forward as I was flying to Prague and thus Central European Time. Anyway I went to the gate as per the timetable displayed one hour earlier and joined the queue and boarded an Aer Lingus plane to London Heathrow. I sat into my seat and was fine and comfortable and then I heard the tanoy about this flight to London Heathrow, I immediately flagged the air hostess and asked her was the plane making a stopover in Heathrow, it wasn't and I had boarded the wrong plane and most likely would have ended up in Heathrow had I not noticed it myself. I disembarked and boarded the correct flight an hour after.

The groudn crew just took the boarding pass and tore off the stub which was how it happened. Presumably the new barcode prevents this from happening now.

ironclaw

@Doltanian, a similar thing happened my uncle a good few years ago. He boarded a plane for Bristol as opposed to Heathrow. They returned to the stand and he jumped ship.

quokula

mel.b wrote: »

The article I read about it was that two brothers with very similar names boarded the same flight -one was meant to fly with ANA and the other with another airline. So likely to have the correct visas to travel. however it does show that the boarding pass scanners are pretty much useless if it didn't alert that the passenger wasn't meant to be on the flight and that the passenger numbers didn't match the manifest. An if someone checked in and then didn't board which would make the numbers match, there'd be a big search for their luggage before the plane even departed.

In fairness, the fact that it happened once on the opposite side of the world and it made the news here suggests that the boarding pass scanners are pretty damn effective and something very unusual went wrong in this case.

AndyBoBandy

Surely a decision like that is down to the captain?

And he’s just cost his airline an additional 8 hours of flight fuel to correct this issue, not to mention the additional landing and take off slot!!

Nothing of this story makes any sense!!

smurfjed

Surely a decision like that is down to the captain?

Not in this day and age, he would have followed instructions.

ironclaw

I follow a good deal of the talks given at IT security conferences and I know for a fact that the boarding card system, in terms of barcodes, has been compromised a few times. Light-hearted entertainment getting into lounges, but they have also got as far as plane seats in tests.

The_Wanderer

I very nearly boarded the wrong flight at DUB T2 earlier this year when travelling to LGW.

Having booked a Plus fare I got transferred to an earlier flight, so had a printed boarding card with a gate number on it. As I didn't have a whole load of time after I got airside, I never actually looked at the departure boards and proceeded to gate 407 (as per boarding card) where the London flight was boarding. The barcode scanner flagged up an issue. I was trying to board the LHR flight which was departing at the same time as the LGW flight! I sheepishly stepped out of line and made my way to I think 409 to board the correct flight.

I mentioned this to the gate staff on the LGW flight and they were very apologetic. Maybe a late change of aircraft or gate caused the swap but it can catch out even the seasoned traveller. In this case it was the barcode scanner that highlighted the issue.

cson

quokula wrote: »

mel.b wrote: »

The article I read about it was that two brothers with very similar names boarded the same flight -one was meant to fly with ANA and the other with another airline. So likely to have the correct visas to travel. however it does show that the boarding pass scanners are pretty much useless if it didn't alert that the passenger wasn't meant to be on the flight and that the passenger numbers didn't match the manifest. An if someone checked in and then didn't board which would make the numbers match, there'd be a big search for their luggage before the plane even departed.

In fairness, the fact that it happened once on the opposite side of the world and it made the news here suggests that the boarding pass scanners are pretty damn effective and something very unusual went wrong in this case.

It's only making waves across the world because Chrissy Teigen was on that flight and going mental about it.

mel.b

According to the ABC, the boarding pass used was a duplicate. Sounds like the brothers had a plan to be on the same flight.

http://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/ana-flights-mid-air-turn-result-criminal-charges/story?id=52024185

Pat Dunne

cson wrote: »

It's only making waves across the world because Chrissy Teigen was on that flight and going mental about it.

Err.. like, who is Chrissy Teigen?

Kristopherus

Pat Dunne wrote: »

Err.. like, who is Chrissy Teigen?

Apparently she's a wannabe stowaway:D.