Chrissy Teigen and John Legend in eight-hour 'flight to nowhere' after ANA flight turns back

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Chrissy Teigen and John Legend in eight-hour 'flight to nowhere' after ANA flight turns back

Updated
Model Chrissy Teigen's flight to Japan turned back ... four hours after it had taken off.

Model Chrissy Teigen's flight to Japan turned back ... four hours after it had taken off.

Chrissy Teigen made her bemusement clear after spending more than eight hours on a Tokyo-bound flight that had to return to Los Angeles due to an "unauthorised person" being on board.

The model and her husband John Legend were around a third of the way into the journey from LAX to Tokyo on Boxing Day when the "mix-up" was revealed.

Instead of carrying on to Japan, the All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight NH175 turned back, leaving its A-list passengers questioning why.

Chrissy Teigen with husband John Legend.

Chrissy Teigen with husband John Legend.Credit: AP

"A flying first for me: 4 hours into an 11 hour flight and we are turning around because we have a passenger who isn't supposed to be on this plane. Why...why do we all gotta go back, I do not know," tweeted Teigen, 32.

In a series of posts Teigen appeared to swing from frustration at the situation to pleasure that she was able to tell her 9.32 million followers about the experience.

LAX Airport Police told news channel ABC7 the flight had to turn back "due to a mix-up" and officers would be on hand when the plane landed.

The US Transportation Security Administration later confirmed the flight was carrying not one but two passengers unauthorized to be on board, t.

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One of the passengers had a boarding pass for a United Airlines flight and the other for a separate All Nippon Airlines flight, said Mike England, a TSA spokesman.

Both were aboard Tokyo-bound All Nippon Airlines Flight 175 when it departed Los Angeles International Airport about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. About four hours after it departed, it turned around and headed back to Los Angeles, where it landed about 7:30 p.m.

Teigen called for a thorough explanation and suggested that the person's incorrect ticket had not been picked up by security scanners.

She tweeted: "They keep saying the person had a United ticket. We are on ANA. So basically the boarding pass scanner is just a beedoop machine that makes beedoop noises that register to nowhere."

The two unauthorised passengers had moved through security checkpoints together and gone through the TSA's 20 layers of security - both seen and unseen - before they made it to the terminal, a government official said.

The passenger with an ANA boarding pass was scheduled for another flight to Tokyo that day, the official said.

It was up to the airline's employees to ensure the passengers had the proper boarding passes for the flight, authorities said.

Once the flight returned in Los Angeles and passengers exited the aircraft, the FBI interviewed the passengers, the government official said.

No arrests have been made, according to the FBI.

By early Wednesday morning, Teigen and her fellow passengers were back on board and headed for Tokyo.

In its initial statement, All Nippon Airways said a mix-up between a passenger and the flight crew led to Tuesday's abrupt turnaround.

"ANA is researching the situation currently to determine how the passenger boarded the flight. ANA would like to express its apologies to the passengers for the inconvenience. We take great pride providing exemplary customer service, and on this flight we failed to do so," the statement read.

There were 208 passengers on the flight's manifest, a spokesman for the airline said Wednesday. Details on the second passenger were not immediately addressed.

After tweeting that the eight hour, 20 minute flight had reached LAX, there was a further delay while police carried out checks.

But despite the undesirable journey, the couple were happy to pose for a selfie with a fan.

Twitter user Raffywu wrote: "My first tweet can't be more epic than this: just survived an 8-hour LAX-LAX flight with @chrissyteigen and @johnlegend on #ANA #NH175"

Singer Legend is due to tour Asia in March, with dates in Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Thailand.

PA, Los Angeles Times

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