Passenger Stayed Behind In Kenya Airways Business Class After Everyone Deplaned

by Gary Leff

A Kenya Airways business class passenger who had “a few drinks” stayed behind after the rest of the passengers had deplaned in Paris. He’s sprawled out across two seats. But at a time when passenger behavior slouches towards Gamorrah on a daily basis, this one has an innocent explanation?

He was, reportedly, just searching for a missing hearing aid.

At this point with air travel – and in society – we assume the worst. One piece of data and it’s easy to create a story against a backdrop of our expectations. But we should give each other the benefit of the doubt! I choose to believe this man was looking for a hearing aid. At least it’s plausible.

As I’ve often written, flying is very small-d democratic. While airline passengers skew wealthier than non-airline passengers, air travel brings together people from all sorts of backgrounds and experiences. They bring their own diverse life experiences together, plus whatever they’re dealing with on a given day of travel, and mix it up with everyone else stuck inside of a metal tube at 35,000 feet. Sometimes that gets combustible! But if we start assuming that there’s an innocent explanation for everything we might have less conflict, and the trip will be a whole lot less stressful.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. One time I had to do such a search when a lens popped out of my glasses. I was helped by one of the flight attendants but I ended up finding it myself. While people were shuffling past, a proper search going over every square inch was not possible. I found it under the aisle seat next to the aisle and I was seated two seats away in the window seat.

  2. Where are the flight attendants…he looks like he could use some help looking for it.

    Poor guy.

  3. Uh, within 5 seconds of looking at the picture I could see that the seat was completely disassembled…pretty clear some sort of maintenance activity going on. Slow news day I guess.

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