Talk about fear and revenue loss.
Sheesh.

I dunno. Could be to pump water from the well. Maybe generate electricity.

As the saying goes, let me get this straight.

Two brothers board a plane to Tokyo. One has a boarding pass for that flight and one has a boarding pass for a flight on another airline. The beedoop machine says that's fine (I love that tweet, BTW).

Nobody has threatened anyone. There's no question that both brothers want to go to Tokyo. It's just that ANA hasn't been paid for that second brother.

Nevertheless, four hours out, the plane turns around to drop the second brother back in LA.

I just checked the internets. Jumbo jets burn roughly 3,600 gallons per hour. That's 14,400 gallons already gone, and then another 14,400 to get back to that four-hour point. A gallon of jet fuel at the moment is about $5.21. That's $150,000. Then there's crew costs - new crew, I assume, for the restarted flight. Then there's the indirect cost of any losses by and inconvenience to passengers. Then the overall PR message of sheer stupidity.

Maybe there's a good reason for this, but I'm not seeing it.

the other airline and say, hey! Credit us $1000 cuz your passenger is on our airline!

If you're going to get so upset about this other brother, do that. Don't spend half a million taking him back and inconveniencing hundreds of other passengers. Esp if it was your stupid machine that let him on the plane in the first place.

have decided that taking a "no exceptions" stance on their security protocol would cause them less of a headache in the subsequent investigation of this incident than simply continuing to fly to Tokyo - i.e. they could tell the investigators "As soon as we learned of the incident, we took the immediate corrective action as explicitly outlined in our security protocol" rather than opening up the door to more questions by having to say "We made a judgment call to make an exception to our security protocol in this instance".

I suspect they literally have NO legal option but to return to the flight's point of origin (or maybe they're allowed to land at the nearest airport, which may've been one and the same in this case, dunno) when it's discovered that an unticketed passenger is aboard. Or maybe if you're > 1/2 way and there's no other airport closer you can proceed to the destination, something like that.

The details on that are not important ... point being, I suspect they have no 'DISCRETION', by law.

Another thing seems nobody is considering here (that I've seen above this post, anyway) ... if the beedoop machine (or the agent monitoring the station where it is) fucked up in THIS case? Then it becomes unknown whether s/he/it fucked up in a whole bunch of cases. Maybe the agent is 'dirty', and the plane has 5 Saudi guys with boxcutters that boarded instead of the proper/ticketed passengers.

Also, even if the person is a ticketed passenger for another flight (which would more strongly suggest that they actually went through proper security to reach the plane vs. their having no ticket for any flight), the 'signature' from the TSA monitor (whatever you call the person that checks your ID & Boarding Pass at the Security Gate with the little UV flashlight) is put onto the Boarding Pass itself, not on that passengers actual 'ticket'. So the crew might not have any actual way of knowing that the passenger went through security cause the boarding pass is kept by the gate agent (and I suspect, promptly put into a shredder), and those guys never even check for the security signature anyways.

You find one screw-up like this, and boom ... you must operate under the assumption that your WHOLE security system may be compromised and act accordingly.

TBH I'd not have been shocked if this screw-up had caused FAA to demand grounding of all in-air flights of this airline that were in their jurisdiction in any way, or at least taken addt'l security measures when every ANA plane landed in a US territory (agents to check ID's of all persons when de-planing, that kinda thing) until such time as the 'problem' that led to this happening ... was sorted.

It's easy for us armchair quarterbacks to call this a stupid decision. But the airline has to act in the face of a possible terorrist act, not knowing and not being able to determine in-flight.

The fact that the two brothers were turban-wearing Muslims probably tipped the scale towards returning to Tokyo. If they'd been white grandmas from Des Moines (or something) they probably would have kept going to Los Angeles.

Just saying

No Muslims.

No turbans.

Flight was to Tokyo, not from Tokyo.

And arm chair quarterbacking is fun, and ANA deserves to be mocked for this incident, from the beedoop machine to the half million dollar cost.

If it was based upon caution, and someone was up to no good, they were already 4 hours out. Turning around meant another 4 hours minimum, not including the extra time to clear air space for a flight that wasn't intended to be in the LAX pattern.

So, if something bad was going to happen, it was likely to happen anyway, because now the plane has been in the air for 8 to 9 hours, and LA to Tokyo is , what, 10.5 to 11 hours?

It doesn't appear that turning around actually reduced any risk.

If a passenger needed to be questioned by police, I'd think the questioning could be easily done in Tokyo, saving everyone a big hassle and possibly a big cost.

Why did all those passengers have to lose a travel day because of a ticket mixup?

if the extra passenger had been undocumented. It's a judgement call.

They had to dump the fuel over the water. I was sickened watching all that toxic fuel drop in the water. I bet a lot of fishes died as a result.

Three hours into the flight, he asked a flight attendant why the flight to Oakland was taking so long.
"Oakland?" said the flight attendant. "Sir, this flight is going to Auckland."

(Old airline joke)

Time to spare? Go by air.

(Older airline joke)

It's us or the bus!

(Oldest airline joke)

the Oakland/Auckland story was true!

Got there, no luggage. The good folks at Houston had put it on a flight to San Jose, Costa Rica. I hate when my luggage goes to a better place than me.

(It only took two days for the luggage to find me).

They told me they needed it to power the plane.

If the guy with the United ticket was supposed to go where the plane was going, wouldn't ANA have been better off just asking United to reimburse ANA for the cost of hauling this passenger?