I am writing this in the air. I’m on my second flight today still trying to make it home after yesterday’s flight cancellation. I am very happy to be in the air. We spent half an hour sitting on the tarmac with our engines off due to weather delays. I was afraid I was going to spend another night in another airport hotel instead of home. But now we are in the air, and I am finally heading home. But something odd happened on my first flight today that I want to share.
I was supposed to be in seat 26B. (A center seat, but when you are just happy to have gotten a flight you don’t get too picky about the seat assignment.) However, when they scanned my boarding pass at the gate another paper popped out saying I was now in seat 25B. Another center seat but one row forward, which meant it was an exit row. At least it would have more leg room.
As I got into my seat I noticed the woman in seat 26B. She was short, heavy set, and wearing a bright purple blouse with flowers on it. I noticed her because I thought, “That was going to be my seat.”
As we sat waiting for everyone else to board I heard the woman in seat 26B ask the man on the aisle to let her out to go to the bathroom.
Because this was going to be a full flight there were several times that the flight attendants asked if seat 26B was open. Each time, the man on the aisle said there was a woman sitting there but she was in the bathroom. At one point the man in the aisle seat asked the man in the window seat if he had noticed the woman “smelled bad.” He had not.
Everyone was boarded. It was time for us to depart, but the woman had not come back to seat 26B. I worried she was going to delay our take off. They can’t take off with someone in the bathroom, right?
We took off on time, despite the woman in seat 26B not having come back yet. In fact, the woman never returned for the entire flight.
So what happened to the woman in seat 26B?!
She might have sat somewhere else. Sure, that’s possible, but this was a supposedly full flight. I would think that someone else would have had to sat in 26B if she sat somewhere else.
Maybe she was sick in the bathroom the whole time, but I really don’t think we would have lifted off with her in the bathroom. If she was too sick to go to her seat I’d think they would have had her get off the plane. If crew members were bringing a sick passenger off the plane I would have noticed.
Unless she could exit through the back of the airplane. There is an opening back there but no jetway. It’s how they load the beverage carts and things. I don’t think they’d let a passenger exit that way. Even a sick one.
Because of this, the most logical explanation* is that the woman died before take off, and rather than deal with a delay, the flight crew either left the body in the bathroom or pushed it out the door where they load the beverage carts in order to not startle the rest of the passengers.
Any other ideas?
*Note: I know this isn’t a logical (or probable) explanation, but I’m a person with an overactive imagination** that was stuck on airplanes all day.
**The part about the woman going missing from seat 26B is totally true though. I just doubt she’s secretly dead.
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Kim Z. Dale 