Bad day in the airline cockpit

Posted 23/11/2011

This is almost comical: instead of a passenger’s nightmare of being trapped in an airplane bathroom, a pilot had that particular misfortune.

“Luckily for the passengers on Chautauqua Airlines flight from North Carolina to LaGuardia, there was a co-pilot at the controls, so the plane wasn't left unattended,” writes Smarter Travel.

The pilot attempted to get help by banging on the bathroom door. When a passenger answered, the pilot told the man to notify the crew he was stuck.

That led to a terror scare when the passenger knocked on the cockpit door.

The co-pilot radioed in to air traffic control that "There was someone with a thick foreign accent trying to access the cockpit."

After air traffic control told the co-pilot to make an emergency landing, the pilot finally broke his way out of the bathroom and was able to reassure the ground crew that everything was all right. But the plane was still met by the FBI and the police when it landed in New York.

Half joked Travel Smart:

“They may have had even more of an emergency on their hands if this had happened on a RyanAir flight after they take away all but one bathroom on flights.”

By David Wilkening

Originally published 22 Nov 2011 at: http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/398/f/5923/s/1a4e0e74/l/0L0Stravelmole0N0Cstories0C1150A3580Bphp0Dmpnlog0F1/story01.htm