Non-stop ride
People get lost unintentionally sometimes. United Nigeria Airline flight NUA 0506 took more than 232 passengers from Lagos to Abuja in Nigeria on 26 November.
More than an hour after taking off from Murtala Muhammed International Airport, flight attendants made a welcome announcement that they were at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, the capital of Abuja.
When the passengers exited the plane, they realized they were in the wrong city. The UNA flight landed in the town of Asaba, 450 kilometers south of Abuja.
UNA issued a statement saying the flight was temporarily diverted due to "poor weather" in Abuja, and the cabin crew made the wrong announcement despite being properly briefed by the pilot about the diversion, Aerotime reported.
Not satisfied with UNA's explanation, the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority launched a probe into the incident.
Meanwhile, a drunken Australian man decided to hitch a ride home on a freight truck in the seaside town of Nambucca Heads in New South Wales. The 43-year-old guy planned to get off at a traffic light in Coffs Harbour, 40 minutes away.
Five hours had passed by the time he climbed out, and he was disoriented, disheveled, and stranded roughly 400 kilometers from his intended stop.
A Queensland police officer found him on the side of the road and asked the man clad in a soiled blue shirt what he was doing there. The officer learned that the man was trying to walk back home.
The police also learned that he hitchhiked on a B-Double freight truck, climbing onto metal racks underneath it. He was to clamber out when the truck stopped at a red light, but it sailed through a string of green lights, finally stopping to refuel five hours later in Queensland.
The bemused police officer suggested it must have been a bumpy and uncomfortable ride.
"I didn't have to worry about the air con, there was a pretty breeze through there," the man replied, according to Agence France-Presse.
The already sober stowaway's ordeal did not end there as the Queensland police fined him $288 for riding in a "part of a motor vehicle not designed for passengers or goods."
WJG WITH AFP @tribunephl_wjg
