Originally Posted by
CPH-Flyer
I believe she was only caught because she did not have a passport. Had she had a passport, this could have gone unreported. Makes you wonder how many times this does happen.
Originally Posted by
RogerWilcoBusDriver
Easy explanation. The JCAB would have suspended the entire crew (CA FO and all FAs) for the miscount, stowaway, and security breach. By having the flight start/end solely within the FAA’s durisdiction ANA’s PR department would have a much smaller fire to put out. “Entire ANA Flight Crew Suspended” is considerably worse than “Passengers Upset about Inexplicable Air Return.” This is the kind of fear the JCAB causes on a daily basis. And to be honest, they enjoy the unchecked power trip as most of the regulators are aviation college pilot-washouts—the graduates that couldn’t get a pilot job and are now trying to justify their existence.
While I would have hated to be on the flight that turned around and landed +8 hours, this might be the right course of action for the industry. The cost of turning the plane around, refuel, reload, the PR nightmare, fines, etc. certainly gets the airline's attention and strongly encourage them to have an accurate count. If the crew knew they would be suspended for a 'wrong' count, my guess would be a lot of crews would find the 'right' count before landing.
Anybody know what happened to the stowaway, in terms of punishment?