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A US-bound All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight was forced to return to Tokyo on Wednesday after an intoxicated passenger bit a cabin attendant mid-flight, reported news agency AFP.
The man, reportedly a 55-year-old American, was “heavily drunk” when he bit the crew member’s arm, leaving her injured, a spokesperson from the airline told the news agency.
The ANA spokesperson further said following the incident, the pilots of the plane with 159 passengers on board, returned the flight to Haneda airport. The intoxicated passenger was handed over to the police.
The Japanese media reported that the passenger told the police that he “doesn’t recall at all” his behaviour. Some social media users are likening the incident in mock horror to the “beginning of a zombie movie”.
It is the second incident to impact the ANA in the recent past and the fourth involving the Japanese aviation industry in just over two weeks.
Another ANA flight reportedly had to turn back on Saturday after a crack was discovered in the cockpit window of the Boeing 737-800.
“The cracked window incident may have been caused by a faulty window heat system as the temperatures are quite extreme at altitude,” an ANA spokesperson told AFP.
“This is not uncommon and has happened to me during my career,” he added.
The most serious recent incident occurred on January 2 when a Japan Airlines aircraft collided with a smaller Coast Guard plane. All 379 passengers on board the JAL Airbus escaped but five of the six people on the smaller Coast Guard aircraft— which was involved in a relief operation after a major earthquake in central Japan—got killed.
On Tuesday, the wing tip of a Korean Air airliner plane collided with a Cathay Pacific plane while taxiing at an airport in Hokkaido. Nobody was injured in the incident.
A similar mishap took place on Sunday when an ANA aircraft came into “contact” with a Delta Air Lines plane at a Chicago airport, the Japanese airline told AFP, also causing no injuries.
Doug Drury, an aviation expert at Central Queensland University, told AFP that “wing strike” incidents “do happen” because many airports are handling bigger planes than they were built for.
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Published: 17 Jan 2024, 05:02 PM IST
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