ozflygirl747

Even if the rogue brother booked an NH marketed or codeshare flight (operated by United) the actual boarding pass will always have the operating airline's flight number on it so the booking could've been for flight NHxxxx but his boarding pass would have stated UAxxxx.

I don't believe you could online check with NH on a codeshare flight operated by UA. Checkin has to be done with the operating airline so the pax would've had to checkin on the UA website.

bocastephen

Either way, there was absolutely no reason to turn around after 4hrs of flying - they could have sorted it out on board, and if it was a security risk, meaning someone who was a threat to the flight, diverted to HNL or ANC (depending on the route they were taking) to remove them, or if it was a misunderstanding or a stowaway, just deal with it on arrival in Tokyo. The inflexibility and lack of common sense by so many Japanese companies with rigid unbendable culture is what creates this sort of havoc....and I say this as someone with inside information as I know someone who works for ANA at LAX and no one was too pleased with this dumb decision.

BruceLynn

Bocastephen - So you are proposing that the reason for the turnaround was not security but mindless adherence to rules which much say that any plane with undocumented passengers must return to departure airport. Does any one has any insight as to whether this is an actual Air Nippon policy?

bocastephen

If security was an imminent issue - meaning, the extra person was deemed to have nefarious intent and calls back to LAX ops could not sort out their ticket or what happened, then in that case, a diversion to the nearest airport would be needed after restraining the person and immobilizing them...absent an imminent security threat, for example a stowaway getting a free ride, or a passenger mixup, or even someone who tried to move from the UA flight to the NH flight, the more reasonable approach would be to continue to Tokyo and let the Japanese authorities handle the situation. I can't access the original flight plan, but if the polar route was planned to go up to Alaska then across the Bering and down, then they could have stopped in ANC to remove the extra person vs turning around 4hrs in and go back to LAX and treat the entire flight as a security issue, or if they went straight across, a diversion to HNL may have been possible - but that is the inflexible and rigid mindset that results in a mess like this - the inability or unwillingness to assess the situation from different angles and figure out the right approach that balances the needs of everyone involved (ie, the other 300+ people on the flight). Very few of the LA staff thought this was a necessary result.

ozflygirl747

Were your contacts able to tell you how the guy was boarded in error?

Oakshadow

Absolutely. If there is the possibility that the extra passenger willfully boarded the ANA flight when they knew they should've been on the UA one, I still don't understand why common sense couldn't have been used and this gross inconvenience and expense could've been avoided. The extra passenger was booked on a LAX-NRT flight and was properly vetted by immigration in both the US and Japan. Unless the extra passenger was somehow considered a security risk to ANA aircraft but not UA ones, an extremely unlikely scenario that no party is currently claiming, there was no practical reason to return to LAX at tremendous cost. If they willfully got on the incorrect LAX-NRT flight, then disciplinary can be taken against that passenger upon arrival at NRT. This should've been a non-news event.

alangore

If this is what happened, the errant pax ticketed, visaed and bound for Tokyo anyway, but just on the wrong plane, ANA's response is even more mysterious. Why not just reconcile the fares on arrival between the two airlines? It would have cost THEM far less than compensating hundreds of delayed passengers.

bocastephen

Unfortunately not - I would say this will be a closely guarded secret among those who wish to remain employed

restlessinRNO

I agree. I have been thinking about this, and the decision to return to LAX seems incomprehensible. Does anyone think of the travel plans of the 300 or so pax who have been inconvenienced?

docbert

Do NH actually do that? United do, but not all airlines do. For example, the boarding passes I got for two of my flights a few weeks ago claim I was on flights AF6670/AF6673, even though both flights were operated by Saudia. Interestingly, when I got the 2nd boarding pass re-printed at the airport, it changed to the SV flight number...
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Once he didn't board the UA flight he would have been removed from the manifest. That information would have then been passed onto US and JP immigration, so the US government thinks he's still in the US (remember, the US has no outbound immigration - they rely on airline records). Obviously as far as the ANA flight he was never on the manifest, so they never received clearance to bring him to Japan (I'm presuming Japan has some form of APIS-style system)

So you've now got a situation where they have broken US law by removing someone from the US without notifying the government, and once he lands in Japan it's going to be a similar situation when he gets to immigration and they have no record of him being inbound. IMHO that shouldn't be enough to turn the plane around, but maybe someone decided it was...

steveholt

Of course they did. It's the fact that they thought about the 300 pax who were likely to be inconvenienced and STILL chose to return to LAX that makes this so compelling.

paperwastage

lax-tyo is a Joint venture between ana and united. They're likely sharing the fares/revenues already

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AlwaysFlyStar

Based on the information currently available, I really can't imagine a situation where returning to LAX was the right decision. Bad for the passengers. Very expensive for ANA. Seems like nobody wins. Also, I still can't figure out what they discovered 4 hours into it. Surely they don't spend 4 hours looking at manifest. Just a captain with poor judgement?

mdkowals

Read somewhere that the fuel use for a 777 is a little over 2000 gallons per hour. So, counting the 4 hours to return to LAX and the 4 hours to get back to where they were, this cost ANA over 16,000 gallons of fuel to sort out (not counting taxi, takeoff, or APU usage).

Readynow