Man Mistakes Plane Door For Toilet Mid-Flight
Jeff Edwards October 02, 2015
Every Friday, FlyerTalk looks back at the week’s most charming individuals. While there are always plenty of contenders for our Worst Passenger of the Week award, only one lucky flyer can take home the glory.
Here are the WPotWs for the week of September 27, 2015.
The Winner — The Man Who Mistook a Plane Door For a Toilet
A passenger arrested and charged with attempting to open the door of a KLM flight en route from Edinburgh Airport (EDI) to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS) has a simple explanation for his bizarre actions — he just needed to use the toilet. Authorities, however, didn’t buy the confused passenger’s excuse that he only briefly touched the handle of the aircraft’s door believing it to be the door to the lavatory.
James Gray of Alloa, Scotland was arrested shortly after his flight touched down at AMS earlier this week. Grey, who was traveling to Amsterdam for vacation, spent the night in police custody. He was later released after paying a nearly $700 fine.
“The crew told me to stay in my seat and I was to be arrested when the plane landed,” Gray told The Telegraph. “I tried to explain it was a simple mistake. It was a misunderstanding. The police came and arrested me. They weren’t too friendly.”
Perhaps even worse than being arrested by not-too-friendly police officers, spending the night in jail and paying a hefty fine, when Gray attempted to board his return flight, he was informed that he had been slapped with a five-year ban from KLM. The bewildered flyer says he was forced to borrow money from a friend to book a flight home aboard a different airline.
Gray still believes the entire incident was overblown, insisting that he would never intentionally attempt to open the hatch of an aircraft flying 35,000 feet above the earth.
“I realize the danger of that sort of thing,” he told reporters.
[Photos: iStock, Cascade via The Telegraph]
Why do I suspect that alcohol was involved...?