A man flying from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to St. Louis Missouri, last week was the only passenger on his Southwest Airlines flight as the...
A man flying from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to St. Louis Missouri, last week was the only passenger on his Southwest Airlines flight as the coronavirus has caused a significant decrease in air travel.
Bob Pitts took video footage of his night-time flight Thursday on an empty aircraft and was given special attention by the flight crew.
'Hi Bob!' cried out the pilot from the cockpit door to Pitts seated in his aisle seat.
Bob Pitts, flying from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to St. Louis Missouri, last week was the only passenger on his Southwest Airlines flight as the coronavirus has caused a significant decrease in air travel
Pitts took video footage of his night-time flight Thursday on an empty aircraft and was given special attention by the flight crew
Empty seats are seen in the footage Pitt took of his Southwest flight
Pitts was on his way to his mother's wake and said she did not die from the coronavirus, NBC reports.
However, the deadly, flu-like virus also known as COVID-19, was to blame for his empty plane.
The Transportation Security Administration last week reported there has been a 97 per cent drop in passenger volume across the US - a level not been seen since 1954.
'Before this global emergency, U.S. airlines were transporting a record 2.5 million passengers and 58,000 tons of cargo each day,' Airlines for America President and CEO Nicholas E. Calio said in a statement.
Pitts served as narrator on some of the footage he took.So far, there have been 759,204 confirmed cases in the US of the coronavirus, which has been blamed for 40,276 deaths.
'We're going on our little flight from Ft. Lauderdale to St. Louis,' he says in one of several videos he took.
'It's about 8:30 and I'm the only person on the plane.'
He called his solo flight 'a very, very, very unique experience.'
While intrigued by his situation, Pitts still was taking the threat of exposure to the virus seriously and wore a gray bandanna as a face covering.
A pilot emerges from the cockpit at the start of Pitt's flight
'Hi Bob!' the pilot cries out to Pitt in video footage he shot
A flight attendant is seen giving the safety check over the public address system, advising Pitts to fasten his seatbelt properly and to put the seat back and tray tables in their most 'uncomfortable' position
A flight attendant gave the safety check over the public address system, advised Pitts to fasten his seatbelt properly and to put the seat back and tray tables in their most 'uncomfortable' position.
She also asked that he make sure 'all those carry-on items you brought on board are underneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead bin, leaving the area around your feet clear.'
'Thanks for coming along with us,' the flight attendant says.
'I want to make sure we show you some of this Southwest hospitality. So when you land, you're going to take out that flip phone your grandma bought you for Christmas,' the attendant explains jokingly.
'You're going to call her. You're going to tell her, 'This was my best flight ever,' the attendant says.
'Welcome aboard, Bob.'
At the start of another video, Pitts says, 'I have a wake to attend this weekend that's very important to me.'
A flight attendant later asks how he was doing.
'I'm doing fine. Thank you so much. Doing just perfect. I feel like I'm VIP,' Pitts says.
The attendant asks whether he was speaking to someone on his phone, and Pitts explained he was shooting the footage.
'I'm just making a video. Talking to myself. There's nobody to talk to.'
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