A United Airlines Boeing 787 jetliner flying from Los Angeles to Shanghai had to turn around at the weekend after it was discovered one of the pilots had taken off without a passport, the airline told CNN in a statement.
Flight UA 198 departed LAX at around 2 p.m. Saturday, March 22, with 257 passengers and 13 crew onboard and headed northwest over the Pacific Ocean, bound for China’s largest city.
About two hours later, the plane turned around and was redirected to San Francisco, where it landed around 5 p.m. local time, according to the website FlightAware.
“The pilot did not have their passport onboard,” United said in the statement. “We arranged for a new crew to take our customers to their destination that evening. Customers were provided with meal vouchers and compensation.”
The flight with the new crew took off around 9 p.m. and landed in Shanghai about six hours behind schedule.
Yang Shuhan, a Chinese passenger on board, told CNN that she heard the pilot’s “very frustrated voice” over the intercom, saying he “forgot (his) passport.”
An inflight screen on United Airlines Flight 198, shot by Yang Shuhan, shows the plane diverting to SFO.
After landing in San Francisco, Yang received two meal vouchers totaling $30, which she used for a meal at a Japanese restaurant in the airport. She said she also filed a compensation claim on United’s website, where she was informed to expect a response within 14 business days.
The traveler from Hangzhou, in eastern China, was on her way back from a business trip. After reaching Shanghai at 12:43 a.m. on Monday, she still had to drive another two and a half hours, she said, leaving her exhausted.
While the unexpected delay threw a wrench in her Monday working plans, Yang said she appreciated the pilot’s “honesty.” However, many of her fellow passengers grumbled and said they were “outraged” and “speechless” on RedNote, China’s Instagram-like platform.
“How could someone mess up this badly at work?” read a popular RedNote post appearing to be from another Chinese passenger on board. The post has gotten more than 10,000 likes.
The disruptions didn’t stop with UA 198; passengers on the returning flight, UA 199 from Shanghai to Los Angeles, were also affected due to the late arrival of the inbound aircraft.
A Shanghai-based business traveler, who requested to stay anonymous over privacy concerns, told CNN that their LA-bound flight was also delayed for about six hours, forcing them to change their ticket to catch a connecting flight.
“I’m feeling pretty frustrated,” the person told CNN just after landing at LAX late Sunday night. “Because of the delay, I have to reschedule all my plans for Monday, which is really inconvenient.”
‘Lack of discipline’
“It’s quite embarrassing (for United),” Shukor Yusof, founder of Singapore-based Endau Analytics, an advisory firm that focuses on the aviation industry, told CNN.
He added that the mistake is “unacceptable” for a global airline like United and it shows “a lack of discipline.”
United is one of the world’s largest carriers, flying 140 million people to more than 300 destinations across six continents each year, according to the company’s website.
Shukor noted that the “absent-mindedness” reflected in the incident could cost the airline dearly, taking into account the costs of things like the jet fuel they had to dump before diverting and compensation for the passengers.
While a series of plane crashes involving US carriers in recent months has raised security concerns, the latest incident with United is “more of a protocol issue,” said Shukor.
Just last week, an Orthodox Jewish passenger filed a lawsuit against the airline, alleging a United pilot forcibly removed him from a lavatory while he was experiencing constipation, exposing his genitalia to others during a flight from Tulum, Mexico, to Houston.
Meanwhile, a New Jersey mother blasted United for asking her to remove her “medically complex” son’s breathing tube ahead of the plane’s takeoff. Her TikTok video about the incident has garnered more than 1.3 million views.
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