Pilot gets stuck in bathroom, sparks terror scare

[RamboLiberal]

There were some anxious moments on a Wednesday evening flight from North Carolina-to-New York after the captain of the flight got stuck in the lavatory. He eventually freed himself before landing, but not before the incident sparked fears of a possible terror plot.

The New York Post broke the story, writing "the embarrassing comedy of errors began when the captain of a Chatauqua Airlines flight from Asheville, N.C., decided to take a bathroom break before landing. But when he tried to get out of the men's room, the door jammed, trapping him ... ."

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The Post says the plane was near LaGuardia and getting ready to land when the incident occurred. The pilot, in an effort to seek assistance, began pounding on the lavatory door.

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"The captain disappeared in the back, and, uh, I have someone with a thick foreign accent trying to access the cockpit," the co-pilot is quoted by the Post as saying to air traffic control.

(that was a helpful passenger)

http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/post/2011/11/locked-in-lav-terror-scare/567754/1

[leveymg]

1. Just because someone is pounding on the inside of a lavatory door people assume terrorism? Geez.

What idiocy.

[Bunny]

2. There's a little more to the story.

I saw this on GMA this morning. The captain got trapped in the lav and began beating on the door. A passenger came to his aid, but was unable to get the door open. The captain gave the passenger the code to open the cockpit door so he could tell the co-pilot what was going on. The co-pilot heard the passenger trying to get into the cockpit using the code. The co-pilot claimed that the passenger had a "foreign-sounding" voice, and he wasn't buying his story about the pilot being stuck in the bathroom, so he wasn't about to open the door. That's when he was cleared for an emergency landing and everything got sorted out when they landed. Fighter jets were preparing to scramble over it.

[RamboLiberal]

3. Co-pilot assumed since a helpful passenger

had a thick accent. Where were FA's?

[louis-t]

4. The pilot gave the code to a passenger?

Sounds like a bad move. You go to the FA and tell them. If I were the copilot, I would have been suspicious too. Not because of the accent, but because of the guy's story of how he got the code.

[Skittles]

5. sounds ridiculous

why wouldn't the pilot just holler for the passenger to alert a flight attendant?