Late JAL plane refused landing by airport, 5 hour divert after missing curfew

Late passengers is one thing, but late planes are a disaster as JL331 discovered. Photo / Fasyah Halim

Being late for a flight is a travel nightmare but rarely is an entire plane told they have “missed the bus”.

On Sunday, the crew of a Japanese Airlines service from Tokyo had to explain the embarrassing reason why it wouldn’t be landing in Fukuoka, as planned.

Asking air traffic control for permission to land, pilots were told they were “too late”, the runway was closed.

According to The Asahi Shimbun, JAL331 was late leaving Tokyo Haneda by one and a half hours, missing the regional airport’s strict 10pm cut-off time for noise pollution. The plane had missed the airport curfew by 10 minutes.

There were 335 passengers aboard the plane who, after 2 hours in the air, were told they were turning back for Tokyo.

To make matters worse, the plane needed to stop to refuel in Osaka’s Kansai Airport.

JL331 became a 7-hour flight to nowhere, with an added refueling stop in Osaka. Photo / Flight Radar 24

Flight tracking data shows that the diverted plane back in Tokyo, far later than planned, shortly before 3am on Monday morning.

The common domestic shuttle route had turned into a seven-hour ‘flight to nowhere’.

Having arranged a hotel for the passengers, JAL told the newspaper that a special relocation service was arranged for the passengers the same morning, at 10.20am.

A spokesperson for the airline said they were still investigating the reason for the late departure.

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Spate of flights to nowhere

Japan’s air infrastructure means that there’s always an option to divert if an intended airport is closed or a plane needs to pick up fuel. Particularly for domestic flights, it’s rare for a flight to be turned back to its origin.

For long-haul flights, over the pacific there’s rarely another option but to head back home.

Recently there has been a spate of extra-long flights to nowhere, particularly out of Auckland International. During emergency closure of the runway on January 28 and February 14, there were rerouted flights to Dubai and Singapore spending up to 13 hours flying a loop back to their port of departure.

Last Friday, passengers aboard Air New Zealand’s Auckland to New York flight NZ2 said they were “boiling with rage” after sitting through a 16 hour flight to nowhere.

The plane’s pilots decided to turn back to Auckland following news of disruption caused by an electrical fire at JFK’s Terminal 1.