Forget first-class.
A North Carolina man received the flight upgrade of a lifetime when he got a complete plane to himself after his original flight was delayed 18 hours on Sunday.
Phil Stringer was the one passenger to indicate up on the gate when his long-delayed 6:20 a.m. flight from Oklahoma City to Charlotte, North Carolina finally began boarding shortly after midnight.
The lone traveler told Insider he felt awful for making the American Airlines crew show up only for him — however the flight attendants got fun out of the situation and shortly turned it right into a “private party” within the sky that Stringer captured and posted to TikTok.
“If you buy each ticket on the plane so that you don’t need to take care of people,” Stringer wrote on TikTok. “(Just kidding, it was delayed 18 hours and everybody else gave up).”
The video — which has greater than 15.4 million views — shows the flight attendants cracking up and cheering for each other as they ran through the required announcements and demonstrations for the audience of 1.
They reportedly ended their loud-speaker messages with “And yeah, Phil, this message is only for you,” Stringer told Insider.
The traveler told the outlet that he initially thought he was late to board when he didn’t see anyone else lining up at his gate.
“I went to the gate and no one was there. I used to be like, ‘Did you guys already board everyone?’” he said.
The flight attendant “was like, ‘No, honey, you’re the one passenger’,” he said.
He said he tried to alter his flight multiple times with no luck and spent 18 hours waiting within the airport because he needed to get home to return to his job because the COO of an actual estate brokerage.
“I apologized like 400 times,” Stringer said for being the only real reason the staff was called in so late.
“They were type of teasing me, like, ‘Really, bro, you couldn’t have left just a few hours later?’” he added, in keeping with the publication.
Once the flight was underway, Stringer’s nightmare delay turned itself around as he got his pick of first-class seats and top-notch foods and drinks service.
“I feel that your attitude determines your destination,” Stringer said. “Yeah, it was a sucky day. Nobody desires to stay within the airport for 18 hours, but when you’ve a positive view, you’ll be able to turn something into plenty of fun.”
He said they spent the entire flight chatting, joking and laughing with each other.
The ad-lib private flight ended with a gaggle selfie of the crew and their VIP passenger and Stringer exchanging numbers with the airline staffers.
Many flight attendants said serving one passenger was actually a dream scenario within the comments below Stringer’s viral video.
“{I used to be a flight attendant for 10 years and this happened to me one time,” one commented. “Our passenger’s name was Ben and I’ll always remember it!! Such a blast!”
