Sitting in Amsterdam Airport

Portland to Amsterdam -- once we were in the air, our flight was fairly typical of transcontinental trips. The actual departure was a bit different though. The flight attendants had secured the doors. We watched the inflight safety film -- how to secure your seat belt, the emergency exits, no smoking, the oxygen masks, the life vests, That was when the captain announced that the plane would be returning to the gate. It turns out that the plane had taken off without one of the passengers. Returning to the gate and having said passenger board the plane would take less time than removing said passenger’s luggage. One of the flight attendants suggested all of us who were seated give said passenger a round of applause since planes seldom return to the gate to have errant passengers board. So who might this character who boarded be? Our guess was that he was an airline employee. He was wearing a badge of some sort. And who else would be allowed to go through the boarding area and then exit out to then miss the plane -- certainly not one of us from the general public.

Yikes, it really is Tuesday morning. Not Monday night like this post says.