One study found that 1 in 50 people will find love on an airplane. Last year one new coupling was famously live tweeted. I even watched one nascent relationship bloom on a short Austin – Houston flight.

World record inflight hookup: 2B helps 2A her stow her bag in Austin. She tells him about her kids and shows him her Priority Pass and Amex Platinum. They held hands for descent into Houston. A new couple is @United. #love #upintheair

— gary leff (@garyleff) May 6, 2018

You meet someone, you have to jump on that moment rather than letting it pass. It may just be a magical connection, like Celine and Jesse in Before Sunrise.

But what happens when you meet that special someone on a plane, but fail to get their name or number before deplaning? I think that if it’s a connection surely odds on one of the passengers would ask for the other’s digits. In fact, I’d expect one of the passengers to ask even if it isn’t a connection, because that person would be likely to read the signals too hopefully.

After all didn’t we learn from what happened to Jesse and Celine? Richard Linklater made a whole sequel Before Sunset around their failure to give each other last names and phone numbers after an amazing night in Vienna.

A woman on Air New Zealand’s flight NZ441 from Auckland to Wellington met the man of her dreams, who happened to be sitting beside her in row 17. She was squeezed into the middle in 17B and didn’t mind it one bit.

He even said he wanted to see her again, which makes the lack of contact details all the more mysterious. However the woman’s sister – who was also on the flight – contacted the New Zealand Herald looking for help to rekindle this lost connection.

Now the woman’s sister – who was on the same flight with her 8-month old baby – has contacted the Herald asking for help finding the man.

“Everyone loves a love story, and we were hoping this could be the start of a Christmas romance,” the woman’s sister said.

…”So if you are the man from 17C, she would really like the chance to go out for a drink and chat some more.”

…”We are not sure if he is single and we might find him and he’ll tell us he has a girlfriend, but it’s Christmas time and everyone likes a happy ending.

He’s an engineer with 8 brothers and sisters, who was traveling to see his mother for Christmas. He offered up his aisle seat so the sisters could sit together and care for the sister’s baby. The woman wanted to sit next to him.

The man got in touch. It turns out they’re from the same town in New Zealand, and they’re going to meet up.

Of course Linklater reminds us in Before Midnight that early passion fades and it takes work to remind ourselves what led us to pick that person in 17C in the first place.