Sometimes a few minutes makes all the difference. After a delayed takeoff, a 2-hour flight across Japan became a 16-hour nightmare when it was denied permission to land because it was 10 minutes late. The 335 passengers aboard Japan Airlines (JAL) flight JL 331 were caught in limbo between their departure from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and Fukuoka International Airport who rejected their request to land.
Air traffic controllers refused to bend the rules for the JAL flight which was arriving just 10 minutes after the airport’s 10pm cutoff time each night for flights. The late-night landing ban was implemented to avoid noisy landings disturbing residents of the neighbourhoods around the airport.
So, the JAL flight found itself flying through the sky with nowhere to land. The flight was…
