Atlanta man boards flight, discovers ‘I am the only person on this plane'

ATLANTA — A Lawrencville man says he was the only passenger on his flight home to Atlanta.

Steven Schneider tells Channel 2’s Kimberly Richardson he arrived at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans Airport on Tuesday only to find his gate to be a ghost town.

“I was so nervous,” Schneider said. “I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I missed my flight!”

Schneider says when he was at the gate, a Delta flight attendant asked him up to the front desk to discuss if he’d like to go home tomorrow due to the fact that he was the only passenger on the flight.

More passengers were originally scheduled to be on Flight No. 2426, but due to the original flight being delayed a couple of times, they decided to take an earlier flight, or postpone until the next day.

Schneider explains to Richardson that Delta tried to call him, but they had the wrong contact number.

Opting to keep his original reservation, Schneider had the entire flight all to himself, he says.

“At first I felt really bad, because I didn’t want the plane to only make the trip because of me,” Schneider said. “But after talking to a flight attendant at the gate, she said the plane needed to go back to Atlanta anyway. She called this an empty leg flight.”

The plane was a MD-90, which seats about 160 passengers, Schneider told Richardson.

“It was so cool,” Schneider said. “One of the flight attendants told me she hadn’t seen something like this in the 17 years she was here. Everyone was just so nice.”

Channel 2 Action News reached out to Delta for comment and they released the following statement:

"We're glad this customer enjoyed a somewhat rare solo experience. Other customers were accommodated on an earlier departure. The reason we operated the flight was so this customer could have that airplane positioned back in Atlanta so it could be in place for a departure the next day."

Cox Media Group