A Hero Passenger Stepped Up To The Plate And Flew A Plane That Had Been Delayed 2 Hours After The Pilot Went Missing

(Source)- A family who were told their easyJet flight to Spain was delayed took matters into their own hands when the dad offered to fly the plane himself. Michael Bradley – an off-duty easyJet pilot – was travelling from Manchester Airport with his wife and young son on Sunday when he announced to the surprised plane full of passengers that he would be manning the stranded flight, The Sun reported.

Taking to the plane’s PA system, Mr Bradley said: “My wife who’s on row 15 with my little boy – hopefully he’s asleep by now, I should keep it down or else I’ll get told off – she rolled over and punched me in the back of the head and said ‘our flight’s delayed by two hours because they are minus one captain for the flight’.

Not all heroes wear capes and not all pilots wear uniforms with a hat and those little wing pins. But make no mistake about it, Michael Bradley is most certainly both for volunteering to fly that plane as apparently having the correct licenses and paperwork. That last part is pretty important.

Now I suppose there is a better than good chance Michael was more interested on getting to his vacation destination instead of doing his good deed of the day. But offering to do any kind of work on your day off makes you a hero in my book, regardless of if you crank out spreadsheets for a living or fly gigantic tin cans in the air 500 miles per hour. Shit, I bet he was willing to work for free in exchange for getting out of Dad Duty for an entire flight.

However my favorite part of this video was the reaction of the passengers. Whenever you buy a ticket on a budget airline, you make certain concessions. You may have to pay a fee for your carry-on bag or the seating will be decided by a bloodbath out of the Hunger Games. So of course they are going to cheer a random dude claiming to be a pilot offering to fly their plane instead of waiting to find their pilot. I’m pretty sure passengers of real airlines with names significantly more trustworthy than easyJet would be willing to do the same if their pilot went missing. And once you hit the 2 hour mark of a delay without access to the airport bar, anybody that has both successfully taken off and landed a plane on Flight Simulator becomes a fair option to fly the plane and save you from airport purgatory.