Man boards plane to discover he is only passenger

Skirmantas Strimaitis is only person occupying any of Boeing 737-800's 188 seats

A man got a “one in a lifetime experience” when he turned up for a flight to discover he was the only passenger.

Skirmantas Strimaitis was flying from Lithuanian capital Vilnius to Bergamo, a city in northern Italy, when he got a taste of the private jet lifestyle.

Strimaitis got the entire aircraft – a Boeing 737-800 that normally seats 188 travellers – to himself during his journey to Italy for a skiing holiday on 16 March.

The situation came about after Novaturas, a travel agency, chartered a plane to fly a group home from Italy to Lithuania.

To avoid flying the outbound leg with an empty aircraft, the agency offered one-way tickets to Bergamo – and only one was sold.

Other than Strimaitis, the only people on board were two pilots and five crew members.

He described the flight as “a once in the lifetime experience” to Associated Press.

It’s not the first time a passenger has unexpectedly flown solo.

A woman experienced the life of an A-lister for free when her flight was cancelled and she was accidentally rebooked onto a plane reserved for transporting airline crew.

Identified only as Beth, the woman posted a selfie of the empty aircraft and uploaded it to Reddit in January 2018 with the caption: “I got a whole plane to myself when I was accidentally booked on a flight just meant for moving crew.”

There were just three other people on board – two in the cockpit and one member of cabin crew.

As the flight was only an hour long, Beth said she mainly used the time to sleep and didn’t ask for any food or drink.

“It was a short flight so I didn’t ask for anything,” she said. “Maybe I would’ve gotten special treatment if I tried.”