This International Flight Had to Turn Around After an Embarrassing Mistake By the Pilot
According to CNN, the United Airlines Boeing 787 had to make a U-turn when one of the plane's pilots realized they had forgotten their passport at home.
The blunder wasn't discovered until about two hours into the flight over the Pacific Ocean. As Yang Shuhan, one of the passengers on the flight, told CNN, she heard the pilot come over the intercom to share they had forgotten his passport in a 'very frustrated' tone. Once the plane made its turn, it was redirected to San Francisco, landing about three hours after takeoff back on the same coast it started on.
'The pilot did not have their passport onboard,' United said in a statement shared to multiple media outlets. 'We arranged for a new crew to take our customers to their destination that evening. Customers were provided with meal vouchers and compensation.'
The plane's 257 passengers were then boarded onto a new flight with a new crew, which took off from San Francisco and landed in Shanghai with about a six-hour delay, which all and all is pretty solid following a fumble like this.
While the meal and compensation are nice, it is key to always know your rights as a traveler if your flight is diverted like this. As United's Contract of Carriage explains, in the event of a Force Majeure Event (an event outside of its control), "UA without notice, may cancel, terminate, divert, postpone, or delay any flight, right of carriage or reservations (whether or not confirmed) and determine if any departure or landing should be made, without any liability on the part of UA." It added that it "may re-accommodate Passengers on another available UA flight or on another carrier or combination of carriers, or via ground transportation, or may refund."
And as the Department of Transportation previously shared with Travel + Leisure, "as long as passengers were ultimately transported to their destinations, the Department does not view the refund requirement as applying to these diversion situations." Which is exactly what happened here. But let this be a lesson to us all to make sure we properly keep track of our travel documents.
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