
‘I’ll never fly’: Florida man takes off after flying home from a wedding
- June 16, 2021
A Florida man who took off from a family wedding with a private jet interior crocodile was in a lot of pain, but he kept flying.
The man, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was flying home on a private flight from Orlando to Tampa and was unable to land at the airport.
He said he had a leg injury, but did not elaborate.
He and his wife were at a home in Jacksonville, Florida, for the wedding of their child, who is three months old.
The plane took off at 7:10 p.m. from the Orlando International Airport.
It landed safely in Tampa at 8:15 p.b.m., about five hours after the plane left.
The flight had a total of 30 passengers and crew members, including the couple, who had a one-hour window to get off the plane.
When the flight landed in Tampa, the man said he felt the need to grab his family.
He thought about trying to walk out the door.
The passenger he was traveling with was not hurt, he said.
The woman was also on board.
The pilot did not notice anything wrong until after the flight took off, he told NBC News.
“The plane landed and I got on the plane and there were two seats that weren’t there,” the man, a former military man, said.
“It took me a minute to realize the lady that was with me was the one that had broken the leg.
So I took the seat next to her and got up and sat down and she started screaming at me that she didn’t have to get up, and I started to get upset and I said, ‘That’s my wife, you’re the one who broke my leg.'”
He said the man told him he was going to jail.
“I said, I’m going to get a lawyer and call a judge,” he said, adding that he tried to talk to his family about what had happened.
“They said they were going to call the sheriff’s office, and then the sheriff came on the phone and told me to go and see the sheriff.
And then he said I’d better get out of there.”
The man said the woman called the sheriff and said he’d be okay.
“So I got off the airplane and I was on the ground,” the pilot said.
He told NBC affiliate WFLA that he called the police department to report what happened.
He was given a citation, but the man says he wasn’t charged.
The sheriff’s department told the station the pilot was being charged with flight from injury to a person and a misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment.
The county attorney’s office said the pilot did have a passenger in the passenger seat, who was not injured.
A family member, who requested anonymity because of the family’s ongoing legal battle, told WFLI the pilot had been suspended and was being investigated by the airline.
“We’re still trying to find out what happened, what happened to the plane,” the family member said.
Florida officials told WFAA that they were aware of the incident and were in contact with the pilot.
The Florida Department of Aviation did not respond to a request for comment.
The private jet pilot told WLWT-TV in Tampa that he had no intention of flying again.
“That’s not going to happen,” he told the news station.
“There’s no way to fly a plane.”