[bigwave916]

Not a complaint (at least not from me) but an occurance that I found humorous.

Late night flight on Midwest Airlines (operated by Republic) regional jet service out of Milwaukee. Weather was decent that night and the boarding process was routine, on time, and the passengers looked like a pretty normal bunch.

We walked out across the tarmac depositing ovesized bags with the ramp workers and climb the stairs up into the aircraft. A little boy traveling with his dad gets on just ahead of me and says "Look Daddy, there's no pilot." I glanced in the cockpit and noticed there were no lights on in there. No flight attendant greeted us. I assumed he/she was in the lavatory or the aft section of the aircraft. I could hear female voices from the back so I didn't think much of it.

The passengers did a remarkably good job of gettiing things stowed and doing their part to insure an on-time departure. We're all seated and buckled in, when a guy looking a lot like WC Fields sticks his head into the aircraft and quickly removed it. A uniformed pilot (turned out to be the FO) gets on with a look of surprise. I'd figured out what was going on by then so I shouted out "Welcome aboard"

This guy says "Well, thank you, but unfortunately we should have been on here welcoming you." Pretty smooth eh? "I'm sorry but we're going to have to ask you to pick up your belongings, deplane, and head back inside. For security reasons we can't have you board without airline personnel on board."

WC Fields gets back on and he's the FA for the flight. All the passengers went back into the terminal, no grumbling or complaining, in fact several of my fellow travelers could also see the humor in the situation. Ground personnel at the gate looked nervous like they were anticipating having to deal with angry passengers, but the deplaning and the reboarding went without incident.

The FA starts the announcement reciting his well memorized safety briefing, but he starts swatting at the air like he was being attacked by mosqitoes or flies. He stops in the middle of the announcement and says "Well, I see we've got a couple of free loaders on board tonight" then he slaps his hand against the overhead bin door and says.."got one less of them now." Then finishes the announcement.

During the beverage service the guy across the aisle from me asks for Dewers and the flight attendant looks down in the beverage cart and says "Looks like they've sent us flying out over Lake Michigan without proper provisions" (he had no liquor at all in the beverage cart) Funny guy.

Point of all this is that this crew, the captain, the first officer, and the flight attendant all apologized at least twice for the mix up, no one got angry, and if you could find the humor in the whole episode, it was an enjoyable flight.

I've been on too many flights where the crew acts like it was the passenger's fault there was a mix up.