The Weird Case of a Standing Passenger on an ANA Flight

A couple of days ago, a really odd incident occurred on board an ANA flight where a passenger was left standing as the aircraft left the apron to prepare for takeoff. Fortunately, crew members noticed the standing passenger before any accidents could take place.

Why the passenger remained standing was because there were no seats left for him. And how this happened was due to management lapse. The man was traveling with his son, who mistakenly downloaded his father’s check-in barcode to his smartphone. The son went in first and when the father later tried to check in with the same barcode, the system naturally returned an error for double entry. Thinking it was system error, ground staff manually verified the man’s documents and allowed him to enter. This means, the system is recording a no-show of the son. The airline then released that seat for booking and someone did take that seat, completing the fiasco.

I’m surprised something like that happened not because this is an SOP-driven industry and it happened to an airline belonging to the obedient Japanese people, but because for the size of an aircraft, you would think crew members can spot anyone standing without putting in the effort to deliberately do it. If everyone is supposed to remain seated during taxiing, how can you miss someone standing?

I tried searching for how the airline handled the situation but the only information I could find was that the father and son were removed from the flight and the original flight took off after a 45-minute delay. I’m not sure why they didn’t instead remove that last passenger who took the son’s seat. But more so, I’m wondering what they did to compensate the father and son for their mishandling.

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