Forgot my Passport

https://lite.cnn.com/2025/03/24/travel/plane-turns-around-pilot-forgets-passport/index.html

“A United Airlines Boeing 787 jetliner flying from Los Angeles to Shanghai had to turn around last weekend after it was discovered one of the pilots had taken off without a passport, the airline told CNN in a statement. Flight UA 198 departed LAX at around 2 p.m. Saturday, March 22, with 257 passengers and 13 crew onboard and headed northwest over the Pacific Ocean, bound for China’s largest city. About two hours later, the plane turned around and was redirected to San Francisco, where it landed around 5 p.m. local time, according to the website FlightAware.”

There is much that I do not understand in this world. Passports I understand; I have been using mine since November 1977. My first was a British passport issued in Australia with a re-entry stamp. Then there was stapled to its pages a Canadian Landed immigration certificate. Then came an Australian Passport and last of all a Canadian passport.

Before Brexit I traveled to and from France with my British passport (fast entry into France because Britain was part of Europe) and with my Canadian passport for fast re-entry into Canada.

I can understand that air-crew are travelers just like us plebs, and that if they want to wander around Japan or Moscow or Lutzk, they need to have documentation.

Two hours into a flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai a sixteen hour flight of about 10,500 kilometres, the flight returns to Los Angeles and offloads its 250(1) passengers because – oopsie! – the pilot had forgotten his passport. Or thought he had his passport until he patted all his pockets.

Of course it is easy enough to forget one’s passport. Or, I suppose, to lose one’s passport to a prankster in the cabin crew. Whatever.

But I don’t understand why the plane turns back.

The pilot is just as competent as ever. The pilot had been cleared or authorized by Los Angeles to command the plane. Presumably had not been drinking or ingesting naughty candies. I can think of no reason why anyone, me included, would need a passport on the plane.

The passport is required immediately you get OFF the plane at your destination. You need the passport to pass through “la porte” – the door – to exit the airport.

The alternative to inconveniencing 250 passengers, delaying their trip by, I suppose, six or more hours, would be to hold the pilot in the transit lounge and dead-head him or her on the next flight – any airline – from Shanghai to Los Angeles.

That would have given management a full 32 hours to devise a suitable punishment.

I don’t understand why a pilot’s forgotten passport should cause 1,500 man-hours of disruption to passengers and, I suppose, disruption to staffing schedules within the airline.

I suppose too that after a sixteen-hour flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai the pilot was due to some sleep and some other pilot was ready to shuttle the Boeing 787 back to Los Angeles.

(1) On re-reading the article I see that on board were “257 passengers and 13 crew”, so a total of 270 souls. The other 12 crew members were flown back as well, so presumably United Airlines had to round up a full crew in Shanghai and then replenish their Shanghai stocks over the next days.

Do the cabin crew get paid for the full flight, or are they docked pay until United Airlines can get its act together again?

If the cabin crew get docked their pay for the full flight, can they provide some input to the disciplinary process?

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