When Vince Conley boarded an American Airlines flight from Little Rock, Arkansas, to Dallas on Tuesday, he thought he was in for a smooth ride.
Instead, what should have been an easy 90-minute flight turned into a nine-hour ordeal in a cramped plane – but ended happily thanks to a good Samaritan.
“I was like, ‘I feel like we’ve been flying for a long time,’ but you know, you start talking to people [and] you kind of lost track,” Conley, who was flying back to Texas after a work trip, told The Post.
American Airlines flight 5085 is scheduled to depart at 4:30 pm on September 18.
But when Conley looked at his phone and saw that it was 6:30 p.m. — about half an hour after the plane was originally supposed to land at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport — he knew something was wrong.
That’s when the pilot told passengers that the plane had been diverted to a small airport in Wichita Falls, Texas, due to an impending severe storm that meant DFW was not allowing landings or takeoffs.
Instead of disembarking during a 6:45 p.m. landing at Wichita Falls Regional Airport, Conley and his fellow passengers found themselves on the runway for more than two hours because airport workers were not allowed to exit due to lightning.
But what could have been a flight from hell instead proved to be a wonderful human experience, Conley, 38, said.
Vince Conley on his flight to DFW. Vince Conley
Picture of diverted aircraft. Vince Conley
The pilot was “transparent” and the flight attendants were “incredible,” Conley said, with all the passengers crammed into the small plane — a CRJ-900 to be exact, which only has about 79 seats — turning into a team.
“There was this family that had like a 2-year-old and like a 3-and-a-half-year-old,” Conley added. “And the children are very good, everyone praises them, and gives credit to the parents.”
The man Conley was sitting next to, Joshua Chandler, even held a pretend duck tour for the youngsters, mimicking the real one he had been on earlier that day, blowing a yellow duck whistle around his neck.
“I didn’t hear anyone where I was on the plane being negative or mean, I’m sure it happened here and there but everyone made the most of those really bad moments,” Conley said.
Conley and his seatmate, Joshua Chandler, who has a duck whistle around his neck. Vince Conley
A photo taken by Conley from the plane, after two hours of sitting. Vince Conley
Finally, the plane was allowed to take off, but just as they were about to take off around 9pm, the lights on the runway were knocked out by a storm and their flight was halted once again.
All passengers and cabin crew had to get off the plane at the small airport after sitting for almost five hours.
But that’s when the magic happened.
“When I entered [to the terminal]one of the first guys down, he must have bought half of the vending machine and just had chips and food for everybody,” Conley said.
Although Conley tried to buy snacks from the passengers, the generous man refused and explained that he had bought them for everyone.
An American Airlines flight should only take 90 minutes, from start to finish. AP
The same thing happened when Conley went to get drinks at a different vending machine: Another welfare passenger paid for everyone’s drinks with his own personal credit card.
That is not the end of the good deed.
“About half an hour goes by, everybody’s just on their phones, hanging out, waiting on standby, there’s this lady, her name is Angela,” Conley told The Post. “He started pacing, he was like, ‘Yeah, yeah!'”
That’s when they all saw a Papa Johns delivery driver outside the airport’s glass doors, carrying 20 family-sized pizzas to feed all the passengers, crew and airport staff.
Angela had bought everyone pizza and told the unsung heroes at Papa Johns that if they got there in 45 minutes, she’d tip them $100 — which she did.
Once the pizza goes through security, everyone enjoys a slice — especially one woman, who shares a long hug with Angela, telling her she was saved by the slice.
Angela and passengers share a hug at the airport. Vince Conley
A passenger orders tons of Papa John’s pizza pies to the airport. Gado via Getty Images
It was all so emotional, Conley said, that it choked him up.
“It took a lot for me to get, like, that emotion; my wife thought I had a little to drink,” Conley told The Post.
“It’s just like happiness in this really bad situation, and people make a conscious effort to want to make the best of it and help each other and support each other.”
Finally, around midnight, passengers were able to get back on the flight and finally landed in Dallas at 1:30 a.m. — but not without Conley exchanging phone numbers with his seatmate.
“I returned home at about 2:30 in the morning. It was a very long day, but it was good,” Conley said.
“It turned out to be a good ending, I guess you could say.”
The Post reached out to American Airlines for comment.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
