Tom Wagner falls asleep on plane trip to California, awakens inside locked plane at Houston
Airline investigators seeking answers after a man traveling from Louisiana to California was left behind and locked inside of the United Airlines jet during a layover in Houston, Texas.
Tom Wagner says he fell asleep and woke up inside of the locked plane, pitch black at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport, the nation’s fifth largest airport.
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“I woke up and the lights were out. I was like, what’s going on?” Wagner told ABC station KTRK-TV in Houston. “I thought maybe it was a layover, still on the same plane.”
“I was coming from Louisiana to see my sister in California. We had a layover in Texas,” Wagner said. “I just took my hat off and I took a nap.”
When he made a frantic call to his girlfriend, she thought he was joking.
“I called my girlfriend, and she thought I was crazy. I said, ‘Debbie I’m locked on the plane.’ I said, ‘I’m telling you the truth; you better go somewhere and get me off this plane.'”
Wagonor says his girlfriend called the airline. After more than half an hour, workers came aboard and were stunned to find the lone passenger.
“I said, ‘Don’t put the blame on me. I didn’t do anything wrong here.’ And then they were, like, try to hush-hush, keep it quiet. And they gave me this little package here in a motel room.”
United Express is investigating how this could this happen.
The airline said there was a post-flight walk-through that was done, but the company couldn’t explain how they missed Wagner.
