It takes around 16 hours and 44 minutes to drive from Oklahoma City, Okla., to Charlotte, N.C. That’s more than an hour shorter than the time Phil Stringer waited for his flight between the two cities.
However, waiting has paid off. A TikTok video he filmed on the empty plane after other passengers gave up on the flight has gone viral, and he managed to make some new friends – the flight crew.
In the caption of the video, Stringer explained that the “18-hour delay turned this flight into a private party,” for around 2 hours and 35 minutes.
He showed the flight attendants having fun performing the safety announcements to an audience of one and hanging out in the airplane seats. They even took some selfies. Since the video was posted Monday, it has been viewed millions of times.
According to Entrepreneur, Stringer’s American Airlines flight was supposed to take off from Will Rogers Airport at 6:20 a.m. It didn’t take off until midnight. American Airlines did not immediately respond to Entrepreneur's request for comment, said the outlet.
Stringer told People Magazine that the flight was delayed around seven times due to “maintenance issues,” so he decided to hang out at a Starbucks at the other end of the airport and get some work done. When he eventually got back to the terminal, Stringer thought he had missed the flight.
“No, honey,” he said the gate agent told him. “You’re the only passenger left in the airport.”
So, he took out his phone to document the unusual experience. It first includes a joke caption that reads “When you buy every single ticket on the plane so you don’t have to deal with people,” and he also said the crew was pulled from their hotels to fly him to Charlotte.
“How many bags do you have to load today?” he asked an airport employee, who responded by holding up one finger.
Once on the plane, Stringer and the crew made the most of it.
“They gave me all the food and drink that I wanted, we joked around, they came and checked on me 100 times, [we] talked a bunch,” he said. “We were joking about finding a game to play. We tried to see if we had bingo or something. It was just a fun time.”
They also exchanged numbers and are now in a group message together, Stringer added. Although he has some new friends, Stringer also hit a small road bump when his bag was nowhere to be found after he landed safely in North Carolina at around 3 a.m.
“There was only one bag on the whole flight,” he laughed in a follow up TikTok.
In the comments section of the TikTok video, “other flight attendants... were praising Stinger’s crew and confirming that this is, in fact, the dream,” said Entrepreneur.
“I was a flight attendant for 10 years, and this happened to me one time,” said one. “Our passenger's name was Ben and I will never forget it!! Such a blast!”
As he departed Raleigh–Durham International Airport in North Carolina for Detroit, Mich., Stringer filmed another video to see if he could score another private flight. While there was some suspense in the video about whether he would be able to get a cold brew coffee and make his flight, Stringer managed it – and it was much less private than the last one.
With FlightAware reporting more than 3,000 delays within, into, or out of the U.S. Thursday, you could be the next person to get the private flight treatment.
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