Medical diversions (a passenger gets too sick) are by far the most common type. I find this interesting how the planes are so much more reliable than the passengers on board.
There are also a hundred or more passengers on a transpacific flight. If planes and humans were equally reliable, we'd expect to see medical diversions to outnumber mechanical ones by more than 100:1....
"Apparently there was an airline that managed to save tens of thousands of dollars per year by removing a single olive from the salads in their meals, because it was hardly noticed by customers it was a massive win, tens of thousands of dollars without anyone noticing.
Another reason is to keep passengers occupied. Keep'em fiddling with stuff and it keeps them out of the hair of the flight crew.
Trying to fit an airline meal into the terribly limited space of an airline tray, and unwrap things that need unwrapping, and keep the trash under control, and find places for the small things they include that you don't even eat or need - and still manage to partake of the comestibles - this requires skills in spatial management that for some may lead to an unrewarding career in solving infernal Chinese wooden puzzles.
By quite a bit, right? Assuming passenger malfunctions were statistically independent, I guess passenger malfunctions would follow the binomial distribution.
Any one malfunctioning passenger is sufficient to fail the overall flight. Assume each is independently probable of malfunction. If we know nothing else about the passengers, we can only model them as having some average rate of successful flight without malfunction, say 99.9%.
Say there are 100 passengers. We roll the dice 100 times, once for each passenger.
The success rate for the overall flight would be 0.999 ^ 100 = 90.4% -> About a 10% chance of flight failure.
If there are 400 passengers, we get 67.0%, about a 33% chance of flight failure.
Given enough passengers per flight, few or no flights reach their destination.
Yeah, many activities trigger it (the pilot will be expecting it coming out of autopilot, if he hears it at cruise because autopilot disengaged they'll investigate).
Once I was too tired on a long journey and made a rude comment when TSA was checking my green card for the third time in a 50 meter line. At that time my green card was expired for reasons outside my control so I also needed to carry some letters from DHS explaining why my green card was expired and that it was not my fault and I should be let back in.
Anyway, after the rude comment she just smirked and wrote XXX or something like that on my boarding card. I was like whatever, but when I got to the line at the gate and they checked my boarding card I got taken into a run for a "special" inspection. So unless you love body cavity searches don't be stupid and say things you are going to regret to TSA agents.
You're lucky that it was only hand written. Some people get that printed on their boarding pass which means it will pretty much always happen to them.
I had a special sticker placed in my passport by Australia because I left my passport laying on the counter while having work gear inspected and paperwork. Didn't realize it until attempting to check in, and then left all of the gear with my coworker while I ran off to get the passport. When I returned with it, the official that was "helping" us with our gear placed the sticker in my passport. Everytime I returned to AU, I got the special screening minus cavity searches. It was my own damn fault, and I was never rude to anyone about it, but yeah, I probably did look a bit shady running off after leaving a stack of large pelican cases. Oh well, that passport has now expired and the new one is sticker free.
I would expect immigration and customs to check the green card. Immigration has never checked my boarding pass for what would be a potential onward flight.
TSA would be at different area in the airport.
Well the people don't get regular maintenance and inspections before every flight where the planes do for starters. It'd be concerning if a random group of a few hundred people were more reliably well than a given mechanical system their lives depend on.
I was on Sydney to LA and we diverted to Hawaii because a passenger died and was taken off. I found it curious that they wouldn’t just wait until LA as the person died in the air so it’s not like they needed immediate attention.
We all stayed on board and we’re maybe down for 20 minutes.
- respect for the dead: a person has just passed on. Many people want at least the illusion of deceased people being at rest, and would think it's undignified to bring the body all the way to the destination when it could be allowed to be taken off and "rest".
and
- the comfort of surrounding passengers: there's not a lot of free space on a passenger plane. I don't know if there are any procedures for moving a body to someplace more convenient to the other passengers, but doing so would kind of fly in the face of the previous point.
As others have pointed out, redundancy. Consider rather the likelihood of say 3 of 3 passengers falling ill - it's basically zero. (unless, as someone else pointed out, they all had the fish).
