A Saturday flight from Tokyo to Houston was diverted to Seattle after an “unruly” passenger tried to open an exit door mid-flight.
“All Nippon Airways flight NH114 departing on May 24 from Tokyo Haneda Airport for Houston Intercontinental Airport was diverted in-flight to Seattle due to an unruly passenger,” the airline told BI in a statement.
Port of Seattle Police told NBC News they were called to the airport “due to reports of a passenger who attempted to open exit doors during the flight.”
“The report stated that passengers and flight crew had restrained the individual,” police told NBC News.
Police added that the passenger was having a “medical crisis,” NBC News reported, and was taken to a local hospital.
All Nippon Airways told BI that while on the tarmac in Seattle, “a second passenger became unruly,” and police removed both passengers from the aircraft. The airlines did not provide more details on what the second passenger did.
Per aircraft tracker FlightRadar24, the Boeing 787-9 flight was supposed to reach Houston at 8:45 a.m. local time. But about 10 hours into the flight, it diverted to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport instead, landing after 4 a.m. local time.
After the diversion, it reached Houston near 1 p.m., per Flightradar24.
Representatives for the Federal Aviation Administration and the port of Seattle Police did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
A similar case occurred in January 2024, when a passenger on an Air Canada flight from London to Toronto tried to open the plane’s door while it was flying over the Atlantic Ocean.
More recently, in April, a United Airlines flight with 360 passengers, traveling from Hawaii to Denver, was forced to divert to San Francisco after a flight indicator wrongly alerted its pilots that a cargo door was open.
