A China Airlines flight from Ho Chi Minh City to the US via Taipei was forced to land at Kaohsiung International Airport yesterday after a reportedly drunken passenger broke a window and attacked flight attendants.
In a statement, China Airlines said a Vietnamese-American man identified as Danh Quinh Suot, 32, assaulted attendants and broke a window next to a seat with his elbow, prompting the plane's captain to request that the flight be diverted for safety reasons.
According to Lee Chung-rong (
PHOTO: HUANG CHI-YUAN, TAIPEI TIMES
The procedure, Lee said, was appropriate for the occasion.
Danh was drunk, the airline said, adding that no other passengers were injured in the incident.
Upon the Airbus 330's arrival in Kaohiung, both Danh and his wife were taken off the plane by aviation police for questioning.
Danh was arrested for allegedly threatening aviation safety.
Aviation police at Kaohsiung airport said that they found medication used to treat mental illness among Danh's belongings while they were questioning him.
Police later took him to a local hospital for medical and psychological examinations. Danh was accompanied by representatives from the American Institute in Taiwan, Kaohsiung Office.
The initial investigation by police found that Dahn was mentally unstable when he broke an inside window pane.
They turned over the case to the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office for further investigation.
Meanwhile, the China Airlines plane, flight 682, spent about two hours on the ground in Kaohsiung before continuing on to Taipei. It took off from Kaohisung around 5pm and arrived at the CKS International Airport at 5:51pm. The flight was supposed to have arrived at 3:15pm.
Family members of passengers were anxious and upset about the delay and complained that China Airlines had not immediately informed them about the incident and the diversion to Kaohsiung.
CAL spokesman Johnson Sun (孫鴻文) said the company regretted the inconvenience caused to the flight's passengers as well as the personnel in the Kaohsiung airport.
Sun emphasized that yesterday's diversion had been a flight safety issue.
"The average window is double-layered, so safety will not be threatened,'' he said.
He said passengers were not allowed to board flights if they were determined to be intoxicated or if they were mentally unstable, but airlines cannot stop someone from boarding if they do not show outward signs of impairment.
Fang Yueh-chiang (
"This was a case of an unruly passenger in the cabin," Fang said, "His behavior did not lead to a plane crash, so there is no need for us to investigate."
According to the Civil Aviation Act (
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS