Plane Brings 300 Passengers Back To Starting Point After 7 Hour Nightmare

More than 300 passengers on a domestic aircraft in Japan had a seven-hour experience as a result of the aeroplane just missing a curfew and being diverted on a circuitous path back to its starting location. Around 6:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, Japan Airlines Co. flight JL331 was scheduled to depart Tokyo's Haneda Airport for the two-hour journey to Fukuoka. Despite previous projections that it would land with 4 minutes to spare, departure was delayed for 90 minutes due to a last-minute plane transfer, and as the flight neared Fukuoka, it became evident it would barely miss the airport's 10 p.m. cutoff time for commercial planes, the airline said in a statement. Several planes headed for the airport had delays in the morning due to strong winds at Haneda.JL331 was not permitted to land beyond the curfew, although other late-running aircraft did. Officials at Fukuoka Airport informed  that they did not consider the delay to be "unavoidable" owing to conditions like severe weather or traffic that would have permitted an exemption to be granted.

The lengthy trip back to Tokyo then started. Initial plans to divert the flight to the adjacent city of Kitakyushu were shelved because there weren't enough buses to transport the 335 passengers, according to JAL. Instead, pilots were diverted to Kansai International Airport near Osaka, some 280 miles (450 kilometres) from their planned destination, where they landed at 10:59 p.m. But because there weren't enough buses or hotels to accommodate everyone, the jet flew to the sky once more early on Monday morning, landing back in Japan's capital about seven hours after it took off. They weren't the only passengers who recently endured a flight that went nowhere. During a trip from Auckland to New Zealand last week, Air New Zealand Ltd.Almost halfway through its nearly 9,000-mile journey, an aircraft from Auckland to New York was forced to return home because John F. Kennedy International Airport's power failure rendered operations chaotic. After leaving Auckland, the jet returned there roughly 16 hours later. The airline claimed to have covered accommodation and transportation costs. One traveller seemed upbeat about the situation after posting that he had been given 20,000 yen ($150) in cash and a new trip. I'm simply relieved there was no plane accident.