There are a lot of things about travel and government that drive me crazy since they make no sense. One of those things happened this month in Frankfurt, Germany, when an ANA flight from Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport had to make a go around because it was just 18 seconds early for the country’s 5am curfew.
Ori Gross, a first officer for Discover Airlines (a subsidiary of Lufthansa), detailed the incident in a post on LinkedIn. Gross writes: “In Europe, many airports have strict curfews for noise abatement purposes. We can all agree on how important a good night’s sleep is.” This is a fact since I live near an airport and I sometimes wish they had noise abatement laws, since a loud thruster can be disturbing. However, I’ve gotten used to it.
Gross enlightened his readers with some important background information like: “Fraport AG’s Frankfurt International Airport (FRA) operates under one of Germany’s strictest night flight regimes. Since October 2011, the Supreme Court of Hesse has enforced a complete ban on night flights between 23:00 and 05:00—meaning no scheduled take-offs or landings are allowed during these hours, with very few exceptions. The airport also limits traffic during the adjacent ‘shoulder’ hours, allowing only 133 takeoffs and landings between 22:00–23:00 and 05:00–06:00.”
Gross then details that on July 3, 2025, just before 5am, he was taxiing for departure to Greece and listening to other traffic, including NH203 from Tokyo to Frankfurt. The tower issued repeated speed reductions to NH203 to delay its arrival until after Frankfurt Airport’s 5 a.m. curfew.
He agreed that both en-route controllers and pilots could have acted earlier to delay NH203’s arrival, but ultimately they followed protocol. And “at 04:59:42—just 18 seconds before the earliest allowed landing time—when the radio transmitted: ‘ALLNIPPON 203, GO AROUND.’”
This flight left Tokyo Haneda just three minutes behind schedule, but strong tailwinds helped it arrive nearly 45 minutes early, taking 13 hours and 57 minutes instead of the scheduled 14 hours and 40 minutes. Even though the flight was safe and efficient, it arrived too early and had to go around.
What did that mean? An extra 16 minutes in the air, added workload for a tired crew after an overnight long haul, and a jarring experience for passengers who may have never experienced a go around before.
I think we can all agree that a shorter flight is always better, and for the air traffic controllers to not allow the plane just a few seconds early made things less efficient, noisier, more dangerous and stressful for passengers and pilots. I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Travel blogger Ben Schlappig, who flagged this story, wrote: “I understand the point of curfews, but having an aircraft perform a go around at a low altitude generates a lot more noise (and pollution) for the local area than just letting the plane land.”
Gary Leff, author of View From The Wing, wrote on his travel blog: “ANA flight arrived 18 seconds prior to the end of Frankfurt airport’s noise curfew, and was forced to go around extending flight time, burning fuel, bad for the environment – but a literal read of German law… and a microcosm of the broader decline in German society; the perfect example of how a reputation for efficiency and competence has been turned on its head.”
Again, I totally understand having flight restrictions, but sometimes they may need to be overridden to make way for common sense. It reminds me of this story I wrote last week, about a passenger on a Turkish Airlines flight who sadly died on a flight to San Francisco. The airline diverted to Chicago, which was just under an hour less than the time to SFO because they were flying so close to the North Pole.
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