A passenger who fell asleep while flying to Los Angeles said he awoke to discover himself alone and locked inside a dark, empty plane in Houston, Texas.
Tom Wagner said he was supposed to change planes on Friday at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. However, no staff noticed he was still sleeping in a seat at the rear of the flight from Louisiana before they closed up the jet.
Wagner, 51, called his girlfriend, who asked the airline to rescue him.
“I looked down the aisle, there was nobody on the plane,” Wagner said on Monday from California, where he was visiting his sister. “It was locked up. Lights were off. No motors running. It was like it was secured for the night.”
As the captain of an oil platform supply boat in the Gulf of Mexico, Wagner said he is no stranger to bumps and other movement while he sleeps, so it was no surprise that the landing bounce did not wake him.
Wagner said he did not panic.
“I had a little smile: I’ve got to get off here,” he said.
However, first, “I had to use the bathroom,” he said. “I was walking around, had to find the bathroom in the dark.”
Then he picked up his cellphone and called his girlfriend, whom he described as “kind of a joker.”
She started laughing.
“Get me off this plane,” Wagner implored. “Stop laughing. It’s getting cold.”
She called United Airlines in Lafayette, Louisiana, where Wagner had boarded United Express Flight 4245 on Friday evening to make a connection in Houston, and was told there was “no way” he was stuck on that plane.
Back on board, Wagner started walking around.
“This is crazy stuff,” he told himself.
He reached the front of the aircraft.
“I grabbed the [entrance door] lever,” Wagner said. “I thought: I better not do that. Let them get me off the plane. So many things go through your head.”
Moments later, a couple of maintenance workers coincidentally opened the door and found Wagner there. One of the workers got on his radio and Wagner was escorted to the terminal. He missed his connection to Los Angeles and spent the night at a motel near the Houston airport.
Regional carrier ExpressJet, operating the flight for United, said in a statement that it apologized to Wagner for the inconvenience and that the airline was investigating what happened.
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