CABIN PRESSURE

U.S. Passenger Bites Flight Attendant, Plane Returns to Tokyo

The man reportedly told cops he’d taken a sleeping pill and doesn’t remember what happened.

A Seattle-bound All Nippon Airways flight was forced to return to Tokyo on Tuesday after an intoxicated American passenger bit a flight attendant during the journey, the airline said.

The unnamed 55-year-old man was “heavily drunk” when he bit the arm of the female crew member, slightly injuring her, an ANA spokesperson told AFP. Other members of the flight crew restrained the man as the plane carrying 159 passengers circled back over the Pacific Ocean toward Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, where he was handed over to police, according to Japan’s Kyodo News agency.

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After being detained on suspicion of causing injury to the attendant, the man reportedly told authorities he’d taken a sleeping pill and had no recollection of what happened.

The incident was the second involving ANA recently. A domestic ANA flight in Japan also had to turn back on Saturday when a crack was found in a cockpit window, while an ANA aircraft collided with a Delta Air Lines plane at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on Sunday evening. No one was injured in the incident.

Two other planes—belonging to Korean Air Lines and Cathay Pacific—collided at Japan’s New Chitose Airport on Tuesday, also without causing injury. That incident came after a much more serious Japanese aviation collision earlier this month in which five members of the local coast guard were killed when their plane was hit by a landing Japan Airlines jet at Haneda Airport.

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