GROTON-NEW LONDON AIRPORT, CT – Two local men at an airport diner in Groton, CT watched in confusion as a woman exited a single engine Piper Cherokee alone and entered the FBO.
“Where’s the pilot?” wondered diner regular, Larry Nolan, 82. “I don’t see anyone else in the plane, do you, Frank?”
“Maybe he’s lying down in the back resting,” speculated his friend, Frank Schmucker, 75, also a regular at the Groton diner. “Go check.”
Saying they eat at this diner every morning to watch the planes come and go, Frank and Larry claim they have never witnessed anything this bizarre.
Diner waitress, Brittany Lewis, 23, wondered if perhaps the woman was actually the pilot.
“Don’t be silly, young lady,” Frank scoffed “The only woman I know of that’s ever flown a plane was that Amelia broad and look what happened to her.”
“Oh, and we need more decaf.”
Brittany was seen shaking her head as she walked away.
Larry later reported that, after close inspection, he could not see any men laying down inside the plane and that the only thing he could make out was a pink headset in the left seat.
“This is wild,” he said, looking completely baffled. “Who do we even call for something like this?”
The incident reminded Frank of a terrifying experience he had on a JetBlue flight in 2016, when two flight attendants were the only people in the cockpit when they closed the door to the plane. “The pilots never boarded!” he recalled in horror.
He added that one of the flight attendants was obviously the Captain’s girlfriend because she was wearing his shirt, “The one with the stripes on the shoulder.”
Frank noted that he did end up making it to his destination safely and that it was a surprisingly smooth flight. “Must have been one of those new automated planes that fly themselves.”
Deepening the mystery, it was later reported to Aviation Daily News that the woman reentered the Cherokee alone and took back off without a pilot in sight.
