This was just plane awesome.
A UK man was flying to fulfill his family in Northern Ireland from Portugal on March 30 – but got here to comprehend that he was the one passenger on the complete plane.
Paul Wilkinson, 65, first smelled something fishy when there was no line for his Jet2 flight on the airport gate.
He asked the airport staff if there was an issue along with his flight, wondering if it had been delayed or canceled, but was surprised after they told him he could be the one person onboard, calling him a “VIP guest.”
“I believed they were having amusing,” Wilkinson recalled to South West News Service.
“I believed I used to be early or late. I kept pondering they were going to say my flight had been canceled.”
As a substitute, he boarded the plane and was known as “King Paul” by the cabin crew throughout the flight.
He got to select his own seat – selecting the front row, after all – and got to discuss with the captain before the plane took off for Belfast.
“I believe it was a complete one off,” Wilkinson explained. “They’d taken holidaymakers to Portugal and there was nobody to return back and it was pure luck that I needed to go to Belfast.”
Wilkinson had left his golfing vacation in Portugal to attend a funeral.
The dad of three compared the experience to being on a personal plane.
“Someone told me a personal jet is within the region of £28,000 [$34,954] and it’ll probably never occur again,” he said.
Wilkinson soaked up every moment, telling SWNS that the cabin crew were smiling and that the service he received on the flight was “second to none.”
He got to have a one-on-one safety demonstration, and so they even took pictures of the experience.
“I jokingly asked for a refund on my seat, which I paid for,” Wilkinson said. “It was just surreal. I went for a walk across the plane, I had a pick of the toilets.”
When he got off the flight, he was also lucky enough to skip the lines at each passport control and baggage claim. He explained that the people working on the passport control couldn’t consider that he was the just one on the plane.
A spokesperson for Jet2 told SWNS, “We’re delighted that Mr Wilkinson was in a position to experience our award-winning customer support in true VIP style.”
The daddy may need been the one in his family who got the last laugh, too – his wife, Deborah, ended up on an especially cramped flight on her approach to Belfast.
And the very best a part of all?
The three-hour flight only cost him $162.
“It was superb, they were at my beck and call, I’m spoilt now,” he said.
“Next time I’ll be asking what number of persons are on the plane.”
