If my flight over to the U.S. was uneventful, my return trip was anything but. It started off a little bit unusual in that Northwest (actually Delta) could not print my boarding pass for the Detroit to Tokyo and Bangkok segments. It was not a big deal, I just need to go to the counter when I arrived in Detroit, but I don't remember that happening before.
The flight from Detroit to Tokyo started off normally. I selected the middle seat in the exit row, calculating that the extra leg room and ability to get up easily would more than make up for having strangers on each side of me. Fortunately, the gentleman sitting in the window seat was very slight, so I was not crowded at all from that side.
I was listening to my head phones about an hour into the flight when I heard something over the intercom about landing. I looked over, and there in the exit row on the other side of the plane was a teenage girl on the floor, surrounded by people with an IV in her arm. Before you call me obtuse for not noticing it early, I was staring at the scene for about ten minutes before the guy sitting next to me noticed.
The girl was a diabetic, and apparently started having seizures in her seat. Fortunately, there was a doctor on board, as well as at least one nurse. They started treating the girl and the decision was made to divert the plane to a nearby city so that she could get additional medical equipment. Originally they were going to stop in Duluth, but bad weather prevented this, so we ended up in Minneapolis.
By the time the plane landed, the girl was sitting upright. When the paramedics arrived, I believe she walked off the plane herself.
One you land, its not a simple matter to just take off again. We had to wait for one hour for the brakes to cool down. Additionally, the pilot needed to obtain new navigation plans, and we had to wait for our turn to leave. By the time we finally took off again, we were three hours behind.
Apparently some of the passengers were much more concerned about their itineraries than the passengers health and safety. I heard one passenger comment about how in Japan, if you do something like this (he assumed the girl didn't monitor her blood sugar, which may in fact be true, I don't know), you pay for it. Others complained to flight attendants about missed connections. The flight attendants were pretty put off by it. I was too. Certainly I was concerned about my connection, but there is a time and place to voice that, and as the girl is exiting the plane does not qualify as the time nor place.
The entire incident had to be very expensive for Northwest. In order to land in Minneapolis, they had to dump or burn 30,000 pounds of fuel. Additionally, almost everyone who had connections missed them, requiring Northwest to put two hundred to three hundred people in hotel rooms. They also rebooked many of us on different airlines the next day. I flew on an 11:00 a.m. (Tokyo time) Thai Airway flight. There are undoubtedly many more costs involved.
When we arrived in Tokyo (Narita actually) at about 8:30 p.m., cleared immigration and customs, and a bus took us to a hotel. They provided us with a voucher for dinner and breakfast. There was a bus to take us back to the airport in the morning. I walked around for a few minutes and took a few photos, but nothing really striking.
Although it was very inconvenient to be stuck overnight, I have to compliment Northwest on how they handled the situation. They put the safety of the passenger first, and really did a nice job of trying to make the transition for those impacted passengers seamless.
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