Passenger Who Had Entire Flight to Himself Is Now BFFs with the Crew: 'We're in a Group Message' (Exclusive)

Flying private sometimes just takes a bit of perseverance. 

On Monday, TikTok user Phil Stringer posted a video to the platform showing his completely empty flight after an 18-hour delay. 

The video opens with an on-screen caption reading, “When you buy every single ticket on the plane so you don’t have to deal with people” as Stringer walks on to an empty American Airlines aircraft.

The TikTok then cuts to a different clip captioned, “Just kidding, it was delayed 18 hours and everyone else gave up” as Stringer explains that he is “the only person on the plane, and they have an entire flight crew.”

Stringer tells PEOPLE that after enduring about seven different delays due to "maintenance issues," he decided to hunker down at a Starbucks in the airport. It wasn't until he packed up from his post to head back to the gate that he discovered he'd be embarking solo.

"I didn't know that I was the only passenger until the very end. I was on the opposite end of the airport working," he says. "When I get to the gate, there was no one there."

He asked the gate agent whether he had missed boarding, but was told, "No, honey. you're the only passenger left in the airport."

In his video that has now garnered over 46 million views, the content creator jokes that the crew "do not want to do this flight," but everyone he encounters is in good spirits and even puts on a show for his impromptu documentary.

“How many bags do you have to load today?” Stringer asks one of the workers. With a salute and a flourish, the employee holds up one finger, indicating the lone traveler’s luggage. 

In another clip, he shows off the empty terminal at the airport. An announcement then comes over the intercom: “Passenger Charlie Stinger, your aircraft will be leaving in 10 minutes,” says the woman operating the desk at the Oklahoma City airport. 

Once on board and with an audience of one, the crew decided to have a little fun with their pre-flight announcements. 

Despite there being a single passenger sitting in the very front of the plane, a flight attendant grabbed the plane’s phone to speak over the intercom for the first announcement. “Small personal handheld devices like tablets, cell phones and smart watches all need to be placed in airplane mode at this time sir,” explains the worker as he points towards Stringer.

The next flight attendant can barely keep her composure explaining how to latch and unlatch the seat belt while Stringer and the rest of the crew stare down the aisle at her. 

“You have to pay attention,” she jokingly scolds Stringer, as he whips the camera toward the rest of the crew seated behind him. “Sorry!” he exclaims as he returns his focus to her. 

Later, during the pre-flight announcements, the same flight attendant models the plane’s life vest. “You’re doing great sweetie,” one of her fellow crew members shouts out to her as she puts on the bright yellow vest.

Stringer tells PEOPLE that he and the crew tried their best to make light of a bad situation and by the time they touched down they had formed new friendships all around.

"They gave me all the food and drink that I wanted, we joked around, they came and checked on me 100 times, [we] talked a bunch," Stringer says. " We were joking about finding a game to play. We tried to see if we had bingo or something. It was just a fun time."

Stringer says he "apologized to them a dozen times" because they "had to come back to work for one passenger," but affirmed that he's still on good terms with the cabin crew.

"We exchanged numbers, so I'm friends with all of the crew now," he says. "We're in a group message together."

The video ends with a sweet picture of Stringer and his new friends. 

In a second video, Stringer gave an update upon landing with a far less unique travel woe: “It is 4 o’clock in the morning,” he explains from the Charlotte, North Carolina, airport. “I cannot get home because I don’t have a bag. My bag is nowhere to be found. There was only one bag on the whole flight,”

Stringer is hardly the first passenger who has gotten to experience the pleasure of an unexpected empty flight. 

In Aug. 2019, Director Vincent Peone flew alone on a Delta flight. Like Stringer, Peone was greeted with all the typical bells and whistles a full plane would’ve endured leading up to the flight, including an invitation to board the plane over the intercom. He was even given a cheeky reminder to remain in his “assigned seat” for an on-time departure. Unlike Stringer, Peone’s solo trip was the result of a rescheduled flight rather than a delayed one.

Similarly, a woman traveling from New York City to Washington D.C. in Jan. 2018 and a Lithuanian man traveling to Italy in April 2019 both experienced empty flights due to scheduling snafus that left the planes empty sans the solo traveler.