- Southwest Airlines staff discovered that a passenger had lost their phone but that the plane had already left the gate.
- Long Beach Airport employees called the flight captain and he came up with a brilliant solution.
- To retrieve the phone from a groundstaff member, the pilot reached out to the cockpit window.
A pilot in an airplane leaned out from his cockpit window to reach a passenger’s phone that had been left behind at departure gate.
Southwest AirlinesTwitter user shared a clip of the incident that shows the captain reaching out to the aircraft and three other employees trying reach him.
The first attempt by the shortest staff member fails to reach the height required. A taller worker then takes the phone and jumps to the pilot’s hand.
The tweet — posted on World Kindness Day — added that the staff “didn’t hesitate” after noticing the lost phone in a gate area, despite the flight being “already boarded and pushed back from the gate.”
—Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) November 13, 2022
CNN reportedA customer on another flight spotted the phone of the passenger and contacted Southwest to inform them. Boeing 737 had already left the gate – prompting the dramatic scenes.
Southwest spokesperson stated that the crew realized the flight was boarded, so they contacted the captain. Insider reported that the captain suggested to Southwest’s ramp agents that they jump up to him to return the phone to the customer.
“The rest was captured by video!”
Southwest said that the person who found the phone had been talking to its owner before they discovered which flight they were on.
Long Beach AirportThe 10th busiest airline in California, with 2.1 Million passengers last year. There are 16 destinations in the US.
It’s unclear when the video was shot, so it’s not possible to determine where Southwest’s N8665D plane was going on this occasion.
The airport could not reach us outside of working hours.
