Sleeping Passenger Left on UX Plane for 3.5 Hours at PHL

For someone who finds it difficult to sleep in a First Class seat, I am amazed that anyone is able to sleep on a ERJ-145, let alone the way that Ms. Guire did:

Like a lot of travelers, Ginger McGuire, who works at a radio station and a local cable TV channel in suburban Detroit, tried to get some rest on her redeye United Airways Express flight from Washington D.C. The flight landed in Philadelphia just after midnight Tuesday morning.

But unlike her fellow passengers, McGuire, according to police and TSA reports, was apparently forgotten. She was left sleeping in her seat alone for more than three hours after everyone else got off the aircraft.

Records show flight 8080 arrived in Philadelphia from Dulles Airport at 12:27 a.m. The crew and passengers deplaned shortly thereafter.

It wasn’t until 3:50 a.m. that a cleaning crew found McGuire still sleeping on the plane.

I wouldn’t call a 50-minute flight a "redeye" and don’t know what United Airways is, but I’m scratching my head trying to figure out how a woman slept through the deplaning of a 50-seat jet and was missed by the flight crew.

A spokesperson for United Airlines released a statement to Eyewitness News that read: "We are working closely with our partner Trans States to investigate the cause and remedy the situation with the customer."

A Trans State[s] spokesperson told Eyewitness News that it is standard protocol to make sure all passengers are safely off the plane at the end of every flight.

No kidding.

I travel the PHL-IAD-PHL route often and the flights are always operated by Trans States. Frankly, this story doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in their staff–not that I was brimming with confidence before this story broke.