One lucky passenger got the equivalent of a chauffeured limousine from Delta Tuesday night: a fully-staffed 160 seat plane with no other passengers. And he can thank a wrong number for the favor.
WSB-TV Atlanta reported that Steven Schneider, flying home to Atlanta, was scheduled on a flight whose other passengers had all been rebooked on different earlier flights because of an earlier delay in the system. But Delta couldn’t get through to him, and he remained the only passenger on the list.
He told WSB that when he arrived at his gate and there were no passengers, “I was so nervous. I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I missed my flight!” At the gate, Delta offered him a shift to another flight, but also told him he could keep his original booking.
At first, he said, he felt bad at making the airline fly the plane just for him, but then was told that the plane would fly anyway; it needed to be in Atlanta for the next day’s operations.
Twitter photo posted by reporter Kelly Richardson.
I can vouch for the fact that it does happen from time to time. Although I had to share my Lufthansa flight with an American serviceman, we were the only passengers on a flight from Frankfurt back to the US. And I’ll add, the service was terrible, everyone was asleep.