Passenger boards wrong flight, chief attendant fined

HCM CITY — The Southern Airport Authority has fined a chief flight attendant of flight VN651 and three ground staff of Việt Nam Airport Ground Service Co Ltd’s Tân Sơn Nhất Branch VNĐ4 million (US$176) each for letting a foreign passenger board the wrong flight.

The passenger was scheduled to board flight VN943 from HCM City to Myanmar’s Yangon on February 20, but mistakenly boarded flight VN651 from HCM City to Singapore.

After a crew member of flight VN651 detected the lapse, a representative from Vietnam Airlines escorted the passenger to flight VN943. However, due to the incident, flight VN651 was delayed by 17 minutes and flight VN943 was delayed by 27 minutes.

Following an inspection by the airport authority, the cause of the incident was later identified to be the card reader system for boarding passes, which had malfunctioned for four minutes that morning. Thus, the ground staff had to check boarding passes manually and committed the mistake.

The authority has flagged the incident as a potential aviation security threat. The incident happened because individuals do not follow regulations properly. Also, the aviation service providers are also to blame for the lapse, the authority concluded. — LV