Med Student’s Wild Encounter on United Airlines Flight Is Giving ‘Netflix’ Vibes
Depending on how much of an extrovert you are (and how cool your seatmates are) meeting new people on a flight can be one of the best or the worst parts of any trip. Airplanes are sort of weird, almost liminal, spaces, and meeting people in those environments can actually be really engaging. Add a couple drinks to the mix, and something interesting is going to happen, one way or another.
On April 16, one med student's story of a chance meeting on a United Airlines flight went viral, and I think it's pretty clear why it took off. This story is straight-up soap opera material, and shows just how intense airplane interactions between strangers can turn when you're sharing a row together!
Tiny correction to the story above- in a follow-up video, @cornwell.med clarified that it was a United Airlines flight, not American Airlines, as he initially said in the story. Still, that small detail doesn't really affect the meat of his crazy story- and boy, is it a doozy!
Things start off great for our protagonist with a random first-class upgrade, a lucky break for a broke college student. He takes his seat, befriends his seatmate, an older, richer woman, and takes advantage of free airplane booze for the first time in his life. So far, so good.
He and his lavish seatmate are getting along fine, the wine is flowing, and the flight's delayed, so more time for chatting. This all sounds like the premise for a rom-com meet-cute, were it not for their significant age-gap and the fact that she's already in a serious relationship. Those barriers don't seem to slow her down, however, when she tries to talk him into joining a certain 5,280-foot-high club. Yikes!
So this flight takes an awkward turn fast (especially when she tries to move in for a kiss), but he manages to reject her advances (which are arguably harassment) while keeping the peace, even walking the now-very drunk woman to her taxi when they land. Fast forward a few days of internet snooping later, and this med student learns that this lady actually has two kids close to his age. Double yikes!
When First-Class Meetings Turn Awkward
With all the twists and turns this story takes in under five minutes, people latched on immediately, blowing the video up to a million views in under 24 hours.
"I felt like I watched a whole Netflix movie," said @wediayay.
Some even shared their own similarly-awkward flight anecdotes. While few other commenters had stories as crazy as his, it was clear that passengers often get a little more "free" in first class- something one viewer called out explicitly.
"People tend to be a lot more chatty in first class. I noticed this when I would get upgraded for work and started wearing massive headphones to appear less inviting," remarked @queenofcrm.
"I had a man sitting next to me tell me he could cheat on his fiance with me because they hadn't signed the final mortgage papers for their house," another viewer dropped a shocker.
"I was in first class by chance once too. The woman next to me kept asking for more "bubbles" and got so drunk her skirt ended up inside out and upside down after a bathroom trip," shared @karo_zuska.
There's gotta be something about the free alcohol (and let's be honest, an entitled vibe) that makes people in first-class so forward - maybe a little too forward, in the case of cornwell.med's opportunistic seatmate. Booze, money, and mystery - it's the perfect recipe for melodrama at 30,000 feet!
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