Japanese flight with over 300 passengers sent back to starting point after 7-hour nightmare

A Japanese airline was meant to take off from Tokyo to reach Fukuoka airport but last-minute change resulted in delayed take off by the plane after which it was sent back from destination for missing the curfew time for commercial flights.

More than 300 domestic flight passengers in Japan had a nightmare on Sunday when their two hour flight was forced into over a seven hour ordeal for missing the destination airport’s “deadline”. Japan Airlines Co. flight JL331 was scheduled to leave Tokyo’s Haneda Airport for a two-hour top journey to Fukuoka at 6:30 pm local time but due to a last-minute plane switch, the takeoff was delayed by nearly 90 minutes, Bloomberg reported. As a consequence, the airline missed the airport’s 10pm curfew time for commercial planes and was sent back.

The Fukuoka airport officials told a local newspaper that they make exceptions for in case of bad weather and congestion but this situation was not "unavoidable". (File Photo / REUTERS)

The situation unfolded despite earlier expectations that the flight would land with 4 minutes to spare, the airline said in a statement. As per Fukuoka airport officials, they do make exceptions for bad weather or congestion, allowing late-running planes past the curfew time however they told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that they didn’t regard this airline’s delay as “unavoidable”.

After missing the 10 pm curfew time, the airline set back on a roundabout journey to Tokyo again. The Bloomberg report added that initially a plan to re-route the flight to nearest city of Kitakyushu was looked at but owing to difficulty in making the last-minute accommodation arrangements for the 335 passengers travelling onboard, the plan was abandoned.

Rather, pilots were redirected about 450 kilometres from their original destination to Kansai International Airport near Osaka, landing at 10:59pm, the report added citing the airline officials. But passengers’ woes did not end here since this destination did not either have enough accommodation arrangements for these many passengers and the flight took off again.

Into the skies on pre-dawn Monday, the flight eventually landed back in Japan’s capital almost seven hours after it took off. The airline said it compensated the passengers by paying for hotels and taxis. It also paid in cash and replacement flight to make up for the unlucky travelling experience for its customers.

(With inputs from Bloomberg)