An American Airlines flight from New York JFK to Tokyo ended up flying for 12 hours just to end up back in the United States so that the plane could be positioned to one of the carrier’s maintenance bases due to a malfunction with the wing anti-freeze mechanism.
The passengers onboard American flight AA167 on March 31 ended up flying for 12 hours, but rather than ending their journey in the Japanese capital as they had planned, they found themselves in the rather less dynamic and cosmopolitan setting of the Dallas Fort Worth Airport.
At just two hours less than the flight time to get all the way from New York to Tokyo, the passengers on flight AA167 had to forgo ramen and sushi for their evening meal and were instead issued a measly $12 food voucher and put up in a local hotel, according to one of the passengers on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
According to flight tracking website Flight Radar 24, the flight took off from New York JFK a little behind schedule on Monday morning before it headed west across the United States for its transpacific crossing to Japan.
But around two hours after passing Vancouver, the plane made a sudden about turn and started flying back towards the United States.
At this point, it might be assumed that the aircraft would have to land at the nearest available airport due to a serious issue with the plane, but after passing straight over Seattle at a cruising altitude of 37,000 feet, the plane then followed a diagonal route across the US, passing over Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Oklahoma before ending up in Texas.
According to a passenger account of the incident, the pilot told everyone onboard that there was an issue with the anti-freeze mechanism on the wings, which would require maintenance attention.
This could have posed an issue if the plane had carried on flying at very high altitude over remote areas of the Pacific but rather than getting the plane on the ground as soon as possible, the airline decided to divert the aircraft to an airport more convenient for its needs.
Dallas Fort Worth appears to be an obvious choice as American’s primary hub, with a major engineering base and replacement aircraft and crew on standby to rescue the stranded passengers.
That fact, however, is probably little solace to the passengers who spent half a day on a plane and have been rescheduled on a replacement flight that will get them to Tokyo more than 24 hours late.
“Safety definitely comes first, and I am glad we had a safe landing, but it does suck to waste 13 hours on a flight and have to do it all over again tomorrow,” one passenger wrote on Reddit. “Not to mention our vacation plans need to be adjusted. The lady next to me was going on a cruise and now she cannot,” the passenger continued.
Unfortunately, when aircraft need to divert due to an urgent but non-emergency maintenance issue, airlines will very often choose to send the plane to one of their primary hubs, no matter how far away that might be, rather than allow the aircraft to continue on to its original destination.
The thinking is pretty simple – if the aircraft can’t be easily fixed by outsourced engineers at the outstation, then the plane will be out of service for days while the airline arranges for its own engineers and spare parts to be sent to fix the aircraft.
In the last couple of years, we’ve seen quite a few of these incidents, although a 12-hour flight to nowhere is definitely an extreme example.
Last June, passengers on a British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Houston were forced to endure a nine-hour flight to nowhere when the pilots made the decision to turn back to the United Kingdom only after the aircraft had reached North America.
In this case, the pilots were alerted to an urgent but non-emergency technical issue with the Boeing 787s Trent engines just as it was approaching Newfoundland, Canada.
Rather than continuing onto Houston or diverting to another US airport where British Airways has limited engineering resources, the airline ordered the plane back to Heathrow, where there is a British Airways maintenance base.
So then land in SEA, then dispatch a rescue plane simultaneously. This isn’t hard, AA just CHOSE to make ir hard.
If a crew and plane were available, why no use it from DFW where the crew and replacement plane would probably be. Oh wait, their probably isn’t a 787 available courtesy of Boeing delivery delays
BULLSHIT
Because the boneheads who run the airlines don’t give a f*** about their passengers.
Stupid headline.