Sleeping on a flight is difficult for most of us especially due to turbulence, engine noise, passenger noise, etc. But not for this British professor who kept on sleeping till the place was towed into the hanger.
After 24 hours of no sleep, 31-year old Kris Lines, a self-admitted heavy-sleeping British professor of Staffordshire University,was flying from Calgary to Vancouver on Air Canada Flight No. 8229 when he dozed off. When he woke up, he was surprised to find himself in a a Hangar at Vancouver International Airport. It seems like no one bothered about the sleeping passenger in the back seat and he kept on sleeping 90 minutes after the flight had landed. He was flying from London’s Heathrow Airport to Vancouver via Calgary.
“It’s absolute craziness,” said the 31-year-old, who is head of sports law at Staffordshire University.
“The last thing I remember was taking off from Calgary. I knew I was safely on board and there was no further destinations and it was all good,” Lines added.
“Somebody would wake me up at the end.”
“I’m a heavy sleeper, so I drank Coca-Cola on the transatlantic leg to help stay awake,” said Lines, speaking from his home in England. “I hadn’t been drinking alcohol.”
“I’d been up for about 24 hours,” he explained.
Lines said that when the Vancouver mechanic woke him, he was disoriented and in a rush to grab his bags and jacket and get off the plane.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry. You should have got off an hour-and-a-half ago,’ ” Lines recalled.
“They took me off the plane down the steps into a hangar, took me into a room, photocopied my boarding pass and said, ‘This sort of thing shouldn’t be happening. Somebody’s neck’s going to be on the line for this.'”
“If I’d been a vulnerable passenger, a young girl or elderly, it could have been a lot worse,” he added. “The other implication is that if I was a terrorist, then I’ve got an hour-and-a-half after the plane’s landed, all by myself, in a secure area on a plane.”
Source: www.montrealgazette.com
The airline did acknowledge the problem but did mention that the flight attendants were very busy with the high number of wheelchair requirements on the flight.
As a gesture of goodwill, Air Canada offered Lines a one time 20% off on upto 4 tickets.
The story leaves one aspect of the story – it fails to acknowledge the pilots who flew and landed the flight.
From Mizozo.com
[…] wakes up in hangar 90 minutes after the plane lands! The Airliner Blog has recently noted an odd story of a sleeping passenger who woke up in the aircraft hanger 90 minutes after the plane had landed! […]