- A 55-year-old American passenger bites a cabinet attendant’s arm during an ANA flight to the US.
- The incident occurred over the Pacific Ocean.
- The flight, carrying 159 passengers, was diverted back to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.
During a recent ANA flight bound for the United States, a 55-year-old American passenger, heavily intoxicated, bit a cabinet attendant’s arm mid-flight, causing the plane to return to Tokyo. The incident, which left the crew member slightly injured, occurred over the Pacific Ocean.
According to an airline spokesman, the man claimed to have taken a sleeping pill and had no recollection of the event. The airline diverted the flight, carrying 159 passengers, back to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, where they handed over the intoxicated passenger to the police.
This incident marks the second recent occurrence affecting ANA and the fifth within the Japanese aviation industry in a matter of weeks. Over the weekend, another ANA flight in Japan had to turn back after the discovery of a crack in the cockpit window. Fortunately, the crack was in the outermost layer of the cockpit window, and there were no reported injuries among the passengers or crew.
“The crack was not something that affected the flight’s control or pressurization,” an ANA spokesperson said.
The most serious of the recent incidents occurred at Haneda on 2 January when a Japanese Airlines aircraft collided with a smaller coastguard plane.
All 379 people on board the passenger jet escaped before it burst into flames, but five of the six people on the smaller aircraft – which was supplying relief after a major earthquake hit central Japan – died.
On Tuesday, at an airport on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, aircraft belonging to Korean Air and Cathay Pacific clipped wings amid wintry conditions. There were no injuries.
A similar incident occurred on Sunday when an ANA aircraft came into “contact” with a Delta Air Lines plane at Chicago airport in the United States, causing no injuries, according to the Japanese airline.
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