North Carolina Man Flies Home Alone After Sticking Out 18 Hour Delay
This is the nightmare that keeps me away from airports and flights unless it’s absolutely necessary. “We sorry sir, but your flight has been delayed. No, we’re not really sure when you will take off now. Weather has been bad in Des Moines and it’s screwing up the whole country.” Knock on wood, I’ve been lucky when I’ve flown recently and haven’t had this sort of thing happen. This Greensboro man? Not so much. BUT he got the last laugh.
Phil Stringer is a realtor who had booked a flight on Sunday from Oklahoma City back to Charlotte. Key word being Sunday. Due to storms and the ubiquitous “other issues” reason given by airlines, his flight was delayed. And by delayed, I mean it only took off 17 hours and 52 minutes later than initially scheduled.
Here’s where my man gets my love and respect for life. The other passengers on the flight-ALL OF THEM-either got on another flight or just gave up on leaving Oklahoma on Sunday. Stringer? “Nah, I’ll wait. Not only am I going to wait, but I’m gonna get some viral content out of it.”
So, MONDAY morning at 12:12, Phil FINALLY boarded his flight for home. Alone. There’s a HUGE part of me that can’t believe the airline followed thru with this flight, but maybe they legally had to. I don’t know.
Anyway, if you don’t watch another thing on TikTok today, this is the one. I would never have had the temperament or patience to wait it out and pull this off, but I’m so glad Phil Stringer did.
South Carolina Airport Has Highest Numbers Of Canceled Flights
Are you traveling to or from the Carolinas this holiday season? If so you might be interested to know that a South Carolina airport ranks as having some of the highest numbers of canceled flights. This is among all US airports. The data comes to us from our friends at Insure My Trip. In order to help empower passengers to make more informed decisions when booking flights around the holidays their researchers analyzed the latest flight cancellation data* to reveal which airports are more prone to flight cancellations.
The last thing you want to start or end your vacation is a flight delay. Unless of course you’re on a tropical island in denial that you have to return to everyday life. But since that’s not typically the case, avoiding canceled flights is the standard we aim for. So to create this list Insure My Trip looked at the busiest U.S. airports with the most and least percentage of flights canceled. This list is based on newly released data, which includes January through August of 2022.
Rankings were based on the flight cancellation rate per airport. Airports on the list also reported 10,000 or more scheduled flights for 2022 (year to date). Sources include InsureMyTrip and The U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS). BTS tracks the on-time performance of domestic flights operated by large air carriers.
Keep reading to see which South Carolina airport ranked in the top 10 for canceled flights. You can read the full study by Insure My Trip here.
Charlie Nance is the Afternoon Drive co-host (along with his wife) of "The Charlie and Debbie Show" at WSOC, Country 1037 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The couple have been with the radio station since 2006. Charlie has won the prestigious CMA (Country Music Association) Award for Radio Personality of the Year and has been a finalist for the Country Radio Hall of Fame four times. Prior to his time in Charlotte, Charlie (along with Debbie) spent more than a decade hosting successful morning radio shows in Greenville, SC; Augusta, Ga; and Birmingham, Al. As a content creator for Country 1037, Charlie writes about dream lottery windfalls, sports, restaurants and bars, and travel experiences in North and South Carolina.
