Accidentally leaving your smartphone behind at home is one thing, but leaving it at an airport shortly before you’re about to board a flight is quite another.
A Southwest Airlines passenger found themselves in this unfortunate predicament after forgetting their phone in a gate area at Long Beach Airport in Los Angeles.
By the time a customer taking a separate flight spotted it and notified the crew, boarding had already finished and the aircraft had been pushed back.
However, staff on the ground quickly worked together to ensure the phone was safely returned to its owner.
In a video shared by the Dallas-based airline on November 13, 2022, a pilot is seen leaning out of the cockpit window in a bid to retrieve it from ramp workers on the ground.
While one staff member makes an unsuccessful attempt to jump up and hand it to the pilot, a second ramp worker steps in and manages to get it to him.
According to Chris Perry, a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines, the passenger who discovered the phone had been chatting to its owner shortly beforehand, so was able to let the crew know the flight they were traveling on.
When the operations agents realized the flight in question was already fully boarded, they got in touch with the captain.
“The captain immediately suggested that the ramp agents on the ground try to jump the phone up to him so he could return it to the customer,” Perry, told CNN via email. “The rest was captured on video!”
Although the owner of the phone has not been unidentified, we think it’s safe to assume that they were hugely grateful for the gesture.
The video was posted on World Kindness Day, an international holiday formed to promote kindness throughout the world, alongside a message using the hashtag #WorldKindnessDay. It’s unclear when the footage was taken.
It comes after Turkish traveler Rumeysa Gelgi, the world’s tallest living woman, shared a heartwarming post from her plane journey from Turkey to San Francisco, which was made possible when Turkish Airlines removed several seats so that she could rest comfortably on a stretcher during the 13-hour trip in September.
SCARY! Ethiopian Airlines Suspends Pilots For Falling Asleep And Missing Landing
Ethiopian Airlines has suspended the crew of a flight on which both pilots reportedly fell asleep and missed their landing window in Addis Ababa.
The plane eventually landed safely, but experts said the incident raised questions about pilot fatigue on the airline, the largest air carrier in Africa.
The Aviation Herald, a news website for the aviation industry, reported on Thursday, August 18, 2022, that the two pilots were flying a Boeing 737 from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, to Addis Ababa, apparently on Monday. “After overflying [the runway] … the autopilot disconnected, the disconnect wailer woke the crew up, who then maneuvered the aircraft for a safe landing,” the report said.
Ethiopian Airlines said Friday that the crew had been “removed from operation pending further investigation. Appropriate corrective action will be taken based on the outcome of the investigation. Safety has always been and will continue to be our first priority.”
The statement did not say whether the pilots had been sleeping.
Experts said the incident could have been a result of the airline overworking the pilots or other external factors.
Hassan Shahidi of the Flight Safety Foundation, an independent nonprofit organization, told VOA that pilot fatigue “would certainly be investigated in terms of exactly how many hours they were flying and potentially whether fatigue or scheduling may have played a role in this, but it is, at the end of the day, the responsibility of the crew if they are fatigued or if they are tired, to report that they’re tired.”
Source: CNN
