Being drunk on a flight is rarely ever a good thing. A drunken Sri Lankan cricket player recently gave another example after he tried to open the cabin door at 35,000 feet because he thought it was the bathroom.
The man tugged at the door for at least two minutes until he realized that it wasn't the toilet that he was trying to open on the packed Boeing 777, the Daily Mail reports.
There were 229 passengers on British Airways flight 2158, including members of the Sri Lankan cricket team as they were flying from St. Lucia to London Gatwick after playing against the West Indies in the Tri Nations Tour.
The team had a long journey as they boarded in Grenada for an overnight flight which made a stopover in St. Lucia.
Passengers were shocked as they watched the incident unfold. One witness, Charlene Francis, 26, was with her one-year-old daughter, her mother, and her brother, when the man started trying to open the door a few feet from them about six hours into the eight hour flight.
"It was pretty frightening. I'm a nervous flyer anyway but things had been fine until then. I was awake. My daughter had been crying. So I saw everything," Francis told the Daily Mail. "Suddenly he came over and tried to open the cabin door several times. It went on for a few minutes. He was pulling quite heavily."
BA flight attendants quickly went running down the aisle and tried to calm down the man who seemed disoriented.
Francis overheard the man tell the crew that he was trying to find the toilet. "It was very scary. He looked very dazed or drunk. He was very tall and wearing black and red 'Dre' headphones. He had a blue polo shirt and the team logo along with his team-mates. Some of his team-mates were shouting and telling him to stop. I was just a few feet away. My mum was really upset. Thank goodness he was stopped."
She had heard that the men had been drinking for four hours before they boarded the flight.
British Airways confirmed and released a statement about the incident.
"During the flight a man got up and tried to go to the toilet. But instead of going to the toilet he tried to open the aircraft door in mid-flight. The event was linked to "an element of alcohol". He explained his mistake and cabin crew accepted it in good faith. Cabin crew reassured customers who witnessed the event," the statement said according to the Daily Mail.
The airline said that it is impossible to open the door during a flight, so the passengers were never in real danger. Security was told about the issue but the police were not called.
After the flight landed in Gatwick, the cricket team boarded another plane on a different airline so they could continue their trip to Sri Lanka.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
