A pilot who accidentally locked himself in the bathroom of his La Guardia-bound plane caused a terror scare Wednesday night when a helpful passenger with an accent tried to come to his rescue by banging on the cockpit door. The embarrassing comedy of errors began when the captain of a Chatauqua Airlines flight from Asheville, N.C., decided to take a bathroom break before landing in New York City.
The door jammed and he pounded his fists on it to attract attention.
A passenger went to see what happened, and the pilot asked him to alert the cockpit crew.
The co-pilot at the controls, wondering why his boss’ bathroom break was taking forever, thought the unfamiliar accent outside the door was Middle Eastern, a source told the Post.
“The captain disappeared in the back, and, uh, I have someone with a thick foreign accent trying to access the cockpit,” the nervous co-pilot told the tower at La Guardia.
The controller, also spooked, advised the co-pilot to declare an emergency and “just get on the ground.”
The pilot finally extricated himself and told his colleagues all was well, but by that time, fighter planes had been alerted.
A spokesman for Chatauqua — a regional carrier for Delta — said police talked to the passenger and quickly realized it was all a misunderstanding.
(Source: FOX)
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4 Responses
Now I can tell my wife – You see it happened on planes too.
Is being problem with the training of pilot and is not acceptable for pilot be so afraid from terrorism that to lock himself in bathroom. Why is that we not letting pilot and copilots carry the pistol for to prevent this?
It seems a bit odd to me that this ‘helpful, concerned’ middle-eastern passenger didn’t just tell a flight attendant that the pilot was locked in the bathroom. I wonder why he ran to the cockpit door. Maybe the facts here are not as ‘comical’ as they seem….
#3- “A passenger went to see what happened, and the pilot asked him to alert the cockpit crew.”