This Never Happened Before

A smile crept to the corners of my mouth while reading an article about a British school teacher who fell asleep on a flight from London to Vancouver with Air Canada last month and woke up inside the hangar as reported on the Foxnews website.


“Lines sent a complaint to Air Canada and got an email back from customer services, apologizing and promising him 20 percent off his next flight.


“This kind of thing has never happened before,” the airline said.”


I was on a trip from Atlanta to Houston which passed through some very troublesome air, enough that the flight was eventually turned away for safety reasons; tornados and severe weather made landing in Houston impossible. We were diverted to New Orleans with a plane full of frightened passengers, many of them sick to their stomachs.


Upon approaching New Orleans came the familiar, “Please return your seats to the upright position. We’ll be landing in New Orleans momentarily.”


From the back of the airplane came a panicked voice, a woman who’d slept through the entire flight, “Oh no; I got on the wrong plane!”


Everyone began laughing and forgot about the last several hours of being bounced around by the storm; well, everyone except the poor woman who couldn’t figure out how she got on the wrong airplane.


My dad told me a story a long time ago, from a different age; a time when rail passengers had sleeper cars between cities on business trips. According to the story, a letter of complaint was sent to the Pennsylvania Rail Road’s president informing him one of their cars had bed bugs which had ruined his business trip and a night’s sleep.


A few weeks went by and a letter was sent from the office of the rail way president explaining, “This kind of thing has never happened before”, that steps were being taken to insure it never happened again and would a discount on the next trip make up for any inconvenience. The secretary placed the official company apology in an envelope; but failed to remove an attached note, “Send this guy the bug letter”.


I’d have to wonder how many airline passengers sleep so soundly as to wake up an hour or more after the rest of his/her fellow passengers have long since gone their merry way; not too many for sure. All the same I’d be looking for evidence of Post-it glue at the top of the apology letter, hinting of a similar note, “Send this guy the sleepy letter”.

This article has been cross posted to The Moral Liberal , a publication whose banner reads, “Defending The Judeo-Christian Ethic, Limited Government, & The American Constitution”.