We’ve all been there. We board a plane and it’s packed to the hilt.
Well, a Scottish woman who was flying to Greece had the opposite experience: She was the only passenger on the 189-seat plane.
Karon Grieve, an author from Glasgow in southwest Scotland, told CNN she paid $60 for the Jet2 airlines flight. The journey, she said, felt “totally surreal.”
“The crew arrived — the pilot, first officer and the air stewards. And they all knew my name,” she said. “They all came on and said, ‘Hi Karen, how are you?’ They were all laughing and saying I’ve got my own private jet.”
Grieve said she struggled to keep her composure because a full plane or not, the crew still had to go through the safety procedures prior to take off.
“The girl stood up and was doing the whole thing and she said she had to do it, it’s a legal requirement,” Grieve said. “She had to do the whole thing in front of me, and I was the only one sitting there.
“I couldn’t stop laughing. I just keeled over laughing.”
The flight on Sunday was the last one from Glasgow to the Greek island of Crete this year.
It’s “not unusual for the final outbound flight of the season to have fewer bookings than normal,” a Jet2 spokeswoman told CNN.
“We’re delighted that Karon got to experience our VIP customer service,” the spokeswoman said.
The flight back from Crete to the UK was “completely full of customers.”
Grieve later posted a photo of her holding a drink surrounded by rows upon rows of empty seats.
Despite describing the experience as one that “couldn’t have been nicer,” Grieve said she’s seen a lot of negative reactions online. Many complained that flying one person was a “disgusting” waste of money, she said.
“There’s always someone that’s going to be negative though, isn’t there?” she said.
“There’s been so many stories about bad budget airlines and this is the first time there’s been a feel-good story. Why do people have to knock it and bring it down? That’s just nasty.”
