LarryJ

They are not out of contact. The ability to communicate with dispatch is required and is handled either through HF radio or satellite data-link or phone.

Oakshadow

Question regarding the above bold; What is the fine for a one-passenger deviation on the manifest? Is it more or less than the cost of diverting back to LAX, timing out the crew, extra fuel costs, compensation for all the passengers and every other ancillary cost of the diversion?

Global321

Anyone know the logistics of the flight?

When were people onboard told? Reaction (besides being pissed)?
I assume everyone got fed - probably twice - before landing back at LAX. I assume it needed to be completely re-catered?
Everyone deplaned? How long?
What were people given as compensation?
The crew had to time out. Where did the replacement crew come from?

Would be great to get some first-person reports, that do not include Chrissy Teigen and John Legend. Nothing against them at all. But, all I have seen so far is the happy/awe shucks reports from them. And even then, no specifics on how it was handled.

No axe to grind whatsoever. These things happen. Just curious.

VTrain

Definitely looks like it was on purpose. Article below says they had very similar names and used a duplicate boarding pass. One brother may be charged criminally, as technically he is a stowaway.

Still don't understand why you turn around. How much is this going to cost ANA, between the fuel, crew, catering, compensation, etc.?

ANA flight's mid-air U-turn could result in criminal charges - ABC News

drewguy

Yeah - guessing for whatever reason the fare was lower (or miles) on the UA flight when one brother tried to buy second ticket, and they figured why not try to get on same flight.

Although, with simultaneous departures the risk of it not working and missing the right flight departing from a different terminal seems pretty high.

bocastephen

You turn around because you have a rigid, inflexible operating process that defies any attempt at finding alternative ways of dealing with a problem - look at any Japanese company website, even ANA's own website - a series of flow chart arrows that guides a user through a rigid process without any possibility of deviation or dealing with an issue that falls outside the flow of the arrows. Even the SIM card vendors have the same method for explaining how to get your service up, even department store and restaurant websites have the same approach - it's all about the process, not about the thinking - and I say this with love as I am in Japan often and absolutely love it there - except the flow-chart mindset. The cost of dealing with a stowaway (the 'fine') vs the cost of the fuel, crew, passenger issues, catering, airport staff overtime, ground handling, LAX ops, etc etc - basically a fraction of what the Japanese govt would have charged ANA for carrying a stowaway.

I would edit my previous post that "some" LAX staff (not all) weren't overly upset with the turnaround given the overtime haul for some...but the whole mess should have been avoided by dealing with this idiot on arrival....or even better, look at the boarding pass scanner message and correlate with what is on the computer screen which should have flagged the passenger as 'already boarded'

There is one winner in all of this - the stowaway himself who will probably end up with a far easier time in the US court system vs what he would have been put through in Japan....although a better ides would have been to handle out bats and paddles to everyone and make him walk past all of the passengers he ended up screwing.

joejones

As someone who has worked in a couple of Japanese companies, I concur with bocastephen's hypothesis above. Those of us who love ANA love them because they are so consistent, but that consistency comes at the cost of having to "stick to the manual" when unforeseen circumstances arise.

Readynow

bocastephen

Slightly off-topic, but to illustrate the mindset - years ago I worked as a contractor for a Japanese company in the US. The manager was caucasian, and the director was Japanese, but the office was run very Japanese-centric. Quiet all the time, hours were very strict, and my manager told me that I needed to be in my seat before "Omora-san" arrived, and remain in the office until he left and to always "look busy". Since I was paid by the hour, it didn't make sense to me that I should work extra hours just for appearances because it was costing them a lot of money per hour even when I'm just sitting there to appear "present" - but in the end, that was the process and I "worked" a lot of extra hours just to be in my seat in case "Omora-san" happened to walk by so my manager would never be questioned. Needless to say I didn't want to stay there very long.

Moral of the story - when everything is by the book and no one can speak up and say "let's do it this way, this time because it makes more sense", you get situations like NH 175. Hopefully all of the passengers eventually made it to their final destinations.

ozflygirl747

In the above video ABC's Aviation Analyst John Nance (and a familiar face to those who watch Air Crash Investigation) talks about having to use reverse engineering to ensure that kind of thing doesn't happen again. While incidents like these may be rare, I don't know how such an event could be totally prevented from happening again. Airlines, not just NH, need to have some kind of procedure in please when a pax goes to board and the gate reader emits a rejection 'already boarded' beep. Some airlines wait until all pax are onboard then do a visual seat check to see if there's a passenger in the seat and ask for ID. That is not foolproof as the check wouldn't work if one of the pax is hiding in the WC or seated somewhere else onboard in a spare seat.

Another way is to get the clicker and do a manual head count but again that's still not 100% foolproof as checkers are only human. Sometimes pax put lap infants on a seat next if there is a spare one next to them which throw your count out. Then you have airlines like Southwest with open seating so everyone gets on and sits anywhere. On a Nashville to LA flight I did in May WN staff collected my entire boarding pass at the gate so a pax wouldn't even be able to produce a boarding pass if asked. On another flight this month on WN flight LAX/SJD gate staff did give the boarding pass stub back to us on boarding, possibly because it was an international flight.

Global321

If there is a fine coming to ANA, part will certainly be from not performing an accurate count which is required by the FAA/DOT.

I believe according to the story, the brothers printed duplicate boarding passes. So in that case collecting the first bp would do nothing if the gate agent did not believe the scanner.

bocastephen

There is nothing to reverse engineer - leave it to a talking head to take something so simple and turn it into a "process". Unlike, say United who tries to board a 773 with 3 gate agents who can't keep anything straight, most ANA flights have more than a 1/2 dozen agents and supervisors running around. If someone's BP beeps, all they need to do is ask the passenger to step aside while they send someone on board to check for occupancy in that seat and inspect their boarding pass. If the flight is full, even someone hiding will be flushed out before they leave the gate, and if the flight has empty seats, they have a print out of which seats should not have someone in them and it's easy to find the extra person.

Steve M

I can't answer regarding this flight, but I was an an AA flight ORD-NRT that had turn around and go back to ORD after 90 minutes or so into the flight. I was in F, and they were just able to complete the full multi-course meal presentation by the time we got back to ORD. We flew on a replacement aircraft that departed a couple of hours after we arrived back at ORD, and it was freshly catered and we once again got the full F meal presentation.

Especially for a replacement flight leaving from the same originating airport, where the catering company, contract, and procedures are already in place, I'd be surprised if it was ever done any other way. There's probably not enough time to figure out how to do it any other way.

ANAStarFlyer

I was on this flight and asked to be re-routed to Haneda on NH105 because I had a connection (ANA did not proactively re-route me.) More on this in another post...

The C cabin was quite empty. I was seated in 5A (rest of row 5 was empty) and roughly 30 minutes prior to arrival back to LAX, they moved one male Caucasian and his luggage to 5D. The flight attendants didn't appear to be one bit concerned. I thought this was strange and assumed this could be someone wanting to urgently make another flight. However, he ended up being the passenger who was escorted off by Homeland Security upon landing.

Will post more in-depth about this debacle because ANA ruined the rest of my itinerary (and family vacation) and am still having multiple back-and-forths with their Reservations Line spanning 7+ hours.

Also, upon arriving at Haneda on 12/28, I was handed Y30,000 for "being inconvenienced". If others were onboard, how much did you receive? Chrissy Tiegen - Did you receive anything? I'm sure you'd be more than p'ed off if you weren't compensated. I'll hit you up on IG later as well...

bocastephen

I'm going out on a limb here, but I don't think she reads Flyertalk

I am looking forward to your detailed review, however.