Dad 'treated like royalty' after discovering he’s the only passenger on Jet2 flight

A dad said he was ‘treated like royalty’ after discovering he was the only passenger on board his Jet2 flight.

Paul Wilkinson, 65, was flying from Faro in Portugal to meet his wife, who had been travelling from Manchester, for a funeral in Belfast and said he started panicking when he got to his gate and saw no one else queuing to board.

After asking airport staff if his flight had been delayed or cancelled, they told him that he was their VIP guest as he was the only passenger. Project manager Paul travelled to the plane on a double shuttlebus all by himself and had his pick of seats on the flight.

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Paul said staff jokingly kept referring to him as King Paul while he stretched out on the front row and he even had a chat with the captain before take-off, Lancs Live reports.

"It was like being on my own private jet,” Paul said. “Someone told me a private jet is in the region of £28,000 and it'll probably never happen again.

"There was no one at the gate which I thought was strange. I spoke to the stewards waiting to take the passports and they said 'oh Mr Paul, you're VIP today. You're flying on your own'. I thought they were having a laugh. I thought I was early or late. I kept thinking they were going to say my flight had been cancelled.

"All of a sudden, they said my bus would be along in five minutes. I thought it was surreal. I expected a massive amount of people to come running but they didn't. The bus turned up and I got on a double shuttle on my own, just the driver and me.

"It just didn't seem right. I thought any minute they were going to say it was cancelled and there'd been a massive mix up. The cabin crew were smiling, they kept calling