He has captured hearts after his quick-thinking and kindness managed to calm an ‘irate’ passenger and stop a Jet2 flight being diverted
A quick-thinking eight-year-old boy managed to stop a Jet2 flight from being diverted, showing a maturity “far, far beyond his years”.
James and his son Phoenix Rose, eight, were heading back from their holiday in Turkey because of a “family emergency” – and they had no idea as they prepared to board what awaited them on their Jet2 flight home to Manchester.
A fellow passenger who was seated a few rows behind the father and son quickly began to be disruptive, and things “erupted” to the point that the flight attendants informed her that the pilot had made the call the flight would have to be diverted.
READ MORE: Mum discovered son had died from laughing gas tragedy after seeing Facebook postREAD MORE: Supermarket worker praised for quick thinking after recognising customer’s diabetes alert
“We’d seen that lady at the gate, drinking whiskey,” James claims to the Mirror. “We never thought anything of it. After half an hour in, the first drink service came round and all of a sudden it just erupted and she’d been drinking her own whiskey and obviously the staff had seen her so they, said to her ‘You can’t do that.”
James claims: “We thought that’d be the end of it. They confiscated a whiskey bottle off her. Told her that she can’t buy any alcohol anyway because she’s too intoxicated, to which she started throwing her hands about, swearing, effing and jeffing, really being irate.”
The flight attendants offered her one final chance to calm herself down and stop shouting and swearing, “obviously there’s a lot of kiddies on the plane as well,” James adds, “it just wasn’t right to do”. However, the disruptive passenger didn’t seem to care, James says, alleging the woman “Basically just said, ‘f**k off and go and f**k yourself.’ As loud as she could.”
The flight attendants, who James couldn’t praise enough for the way they handled the situation, informed the passengers that the plane would have to be diverted, but desperate to get home due to the emergency the family was dealing with, James “sprung up out of this seat” and begged the flight attendant passing by him to give him a chance to try and smooth things over, saying “Please, please we can’t afford the plane to be diverted, please just give me 30 seconds.”
Initially a bit reluctant because the call had been made to diver the flight, the attendant agreed to try one more time, and James asked the woman sitting in between him and Phoenix to swap seats with the inebriated passenger. “As a parent I was a bit concerned about doing it anyway but you don’t really know the full situation until you get into it. So me and my lad, effectively, well I say me and my lad, it was all my lad effectively, he just took all the control. Phoenix, he got his cards out, he started singing to her this Dance Monkey song.”
For the rest of the flight, the eight-year-old reportedly impressively managed to keep the angry passenger calm. “Phoenix for three and a half hours was singing to her, was talking to her about his football, talking to about his Youtube channel, asking her questions about her kids, saying, ‘listen you don’t want to get arrested when you get there, tell me about your kids.’ It was just phenomenal to see him.”
However, when a the story hit the headlines about the initially mystery passengers saving the day, James realised what a big impact the kindness his son had shown to the woman had. “It does look like the whole country – because it’s gone everywhere – has fell in love with him.” The story has even crossed the Atlantic, with American news outlets getting in touch hoping to interview the family.
The story was made public, James said, through another passenger on the plane who was trying to get home to a family emergency, just like they were. Jet2 have offered the entire family free flights to a destination of their choosing and are sending the young Manchester United fan a goodie bag as a thank you.
“He’s just a naturally nice kid who is polite, who helps anyone, anyone he can. I mean, we’ve literally just come to, we’re up at Burnley because he’s playing against Burnley Academy. And we’ve just been to local Tescos up here to get him a drink. And there’s a homeless person outside Tescos and Phoenix has said, ‘Dad, can you, can give him some money?’ And I said, ‘I’ve only got notes, mate.’ He said, ‘Well, give him a fiver then, Dad.’ So, well, that’s Phoenix in a nutshell. He’d do anything for anyone.”
The proud dad said his son, who plays in the position of goalkeeper, has learned skills in the sport that helped him calm the disruptive woman down, “You have to be mentally switched on and concentrated and good at presentation and good at commanding yourself,” he explains, during the half-time break of his son’s game. Phoenix is “so proud of what’s happened” and the positive reaction, but he had a “magical” reaction to getting so much attention, saying: “Well Dad, that’s just us as a family, we’d do it again, wouldn’t we dad?”
A spokesperson from Jet2 said: “The vast majority of customers have a brilliant experience when they fly with us, however our highly-trained crew are always there to look after everyone, as well as provide our friendly in-flight service. We have heard about how James and Phoenix reassured a fellow customer and we would like to congratulate and thank them for their kindness and care.
“We are arranging for a goodie pack to be sent to them, alongside a voucher for a pair of free flights, in recognition of what they did.”
To ensure you don’t miss out on all the latest from Belfast Live, be sure to make us your preferred source on Google.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login