Man locked in airplane

[Ahriman238]

A man who dozed off during a connecting flight Friday was not dreaming when he woke to find himself alone and locked in a darkened cabin.

Tom Wagner, a Louisiana boat captain, nodded off on a flight from Lafayette, La., to Los Angeles on United Airlines with a stop in Houston when he got a different kind of layover.

“I woke up, and I looked up at the ceiling, and I saw the lights were out,’’ Wagner said on TODAY Monday. “Looked down the aisle, ain’t nobody was home.”

Wagner tried to open the door to exit the plane, but it was locked. He quickly called his girlfriend, who thought he was joking.

“She started laughing,’’ he said. “I said, 'You gotta call United and get me off this plane.'’’

His girlfriend quickly called the airline.

“She says, 'My boyfriend's on that airplane, you gotta get someone to get him off,’’’ he said. “And he said, 'Ma'am, we sweep those planes. There's no way he's on that plane.'’’

After a half hour, maintenance workers opened the door and were stunned to find him inside.

“They said, 'Where's your badge?'’’ Wagner said. “I said, 'Dude, I don't work here, I'm a passenger on this airplane.' And he said 'Hold on, hold on.' He didn't believe it.”

“It’s obvious in this case that the crew exiting the airplane did not do a sweep,’’ aviation expert Michael Boyd told TODAY. “Whatever they say, you can’t miss this.”

United offered him $250 and a hotel room in Houston for the night, according to Wagner. ExpressJet, the company that operated the United flight, issued a statement to TODAY.

“ExpressJet is investigating to determine how this occurred. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this caused for the passenger."

Wagner was puzzled as to why no one tried to wake him.

“I just don't know how it happened, I really don't,’’ he said. “I mean, passengers get off, you'd think somebody would have rubbed me or pushed me and said, 'Hey buddy, we're here.'’’

Wagner is set to return to Louisiana on United next week. This time, he said, he’ll get a good night’s sleep before the flight.

Huh. He must have been pretty tired to sleep through landing. I'm assuming, like Boyd, that they didn't bother to sweep the place after the flight.

[Simon_Jester]

I wonder if they routinely fail to sweep, or if it was a one-off weird kind of thing that happened for strange reasons. This might actually happen pretty often if they never swept the plane.

[phongn]

I wonder if they routinely fail to sweep, or if it was a one-off weird kind of thing that happened for strange reasons. This might actually happen pretty often if they never swept the plane.

You are supposed to sweep the plane before you close it out.

[Wicked Pilot]

The E135 isn't that big, I wonder if maybe the guy was real short and slumped over in the right side window seat. Sleeping through a landing isn't hard, and sleeping on the taxi to the gate is easier.

I bet there's flight attendant at ExpressJet who's about to get canned...

[RogueIce]

If that was the plane's last stop, I suppose it's possible they didn't bother out of laziness or whatever, figuring they could just do it in the morning (or leave it for the morning crew to do, if they're not flying again the next day).

Whether that's a systemic laziness amongst ExpressJet or just this particular crew, who can say? I bet there'll be a lot of "SWEEP THE PLANES OR ELSE" in the foreseeable future for them, though. And as WP says, somebody's losing their job.