The last time a flight of mine was grounded indefinitely, I spent the hours that followed rushing to the nearest, least shady hotel I could find and using social media and the airline’s call center to try to get rebooked. When it was all said and done, I didn’t even get a voucher. So, when I saw that Adults and Overcompensating star Owen Thiele turned a grounded flight into an adventure full of celebrity sightings and hangouts with his fellow stranded airline passengers, I knew I had to sit down and take notes — because, clearly, I wasn’t romanticizing my travel woes to their full potential.
On Sept. 9, Thiele took to Instagram to share that his flight made an emergency landing in Albuquerque and asked his followers for recommendations for where to go in the area. In a series of subsequent IG Story posts, he detailed an adventure that very easily could make for an award-winning movie. (Seriously, a producer needs to get on this one.)
In his next few posts, Thiele shared that he spotted Andrew Garfield and Nick Robinson on his plane. He cracked a joke that if the plane issues resulted in any fatalities, Garfield and Robinson’s names would be the ones in the headline (not his own).
For some, the sightings of Robinson and Garfield might have been just the thing to make the pit stop a little more bearable. But Thiele’s journey had only just begun. In between receiving updates about a hotel assignment and potentially having to remain in the airport to wait for a backup plane, Thiele befriended nine individuals, including some potentially familiar faces such as Mark Ambor, Duncan Joseph, Isabela Ferrer, and Ella D’Souza.Â
Thiele and the group grabbed drinks before ridesharing to Dave & Buster’s (where he took the crown at Pop-a-Shot), and finally, closed off the last hours before the flight with a P. F. Chang’s order. Notably, the order they received from Uber Eats turned out not to be theirs, but Thiele’s fortune cookie told him that “a thrilling new experience (was) at his fingertips.” So, you could say it was almost destined.
Naturally, the group also recorded a catwalk to ADÉLA’s “Ain’t in LA” once they returned to the airport, because clearly, there were some icons stuck in New Mexico.
The group had one final surprise, as their backup flight experienced some issues with weight, but ultimately, the trip had a happy ending as Thiele posted his final IG Stories from a New York City taxi, letting his audience know that they had arrived — and, more importantly, made a group chat with his newfound friends to stay in touch.
He also traded a traditional post-trip feed dump for a carousel immortalizing the Stories he’d posted about his adventures in aviation, asking in the caption, “Who wants to get stuck in Albuquerque again w me?”
The answer to that definitely includes me, and I feel fairly confident in saying that the thousands of other people following this tale would say the same.