CHARLOTTE – What would you do if you were the only passenger on an airliner?
Such was the case with Phil Stringer, a Greensboro-area real estate agent, who flew to Charlotte early Monday morning.
He had booked a flight from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Charlotte for Sunday. Due to storms and other issues across the country, the flight was delayed a whopping 17 hours and 52 minutes. At that point, every second passenger had either booked another flight or decided not to depart that day – but not Stringer.
At 00:12, Stringer was the only passenger on board an Airbus A321 bound for CLT.
Stringer posted a video of his unique experience on TikTok. The video was clicked millions of times within a few hours.
Stringer’s cheers can be clearly seen in the video, but even American Airlines staff at the gate and on the plane seem enthralled by his VIP adventure.
A baggage handler smiled when Stringer asked how many bags he needed to load for that flight.
“One.”
A flight attendant laughed as Stringer pointed the camera away from preflight security and said, “Not paying attention?”
Channel 9’s Evan Donovan spoke to Stringer on Monday and he said he ended up getting his own personal crew.
“They had to be summoned; They were in their hotel like they were going to bed,” Stringer said. “I felt so bad because I was like, oh my god, they literally had to come here for me.”
Stringer said he merely “turned a bad situation into a good one.”
“I had just posted on my social media that day that your attitude determines your direction,” Stringer said.
According to FlightAware, the flight landed in Charlotte at 3:21 a.m. Monday, 17 hours and 31 minutes after it was scheduled to arrive.
As if the 18-hour delay wasn’t enough, he received another slap in the face upon landing in Charlotte.
“My bag actually got misplaced in Charlotte for about 45 minutes,” Stringer said. “I thought, ‘Are you kidding?’ We lost the one bag we had on the plane.”
Despite the problems, Stringer said it was a flight he will never forget.
“We joked, we laughed, we broke up. I exchanged phone numbers with them like we’re still literally texting and group messaging today,” Stringer said.
(REGARD: A photo of a Delta Airlines flight attendant comforting a woman on a CLT flight has gone viral)
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