Air travel, which is statistically safer than driving, is having a lot of bad press lately. Tickets are way too expensive, there’s always a great chance that you’ll be delayed, and there’s that little issue of Boeing planes falling apart midair. There’s actually also been a string of other aircraft issues lately. I’m not a nervous flier in general, but when I fly with my kids, I am always a borderline nervous wreck.
Last week, James Corden was on a British Airways flight from Portugal to England that ran into some trouble mid-air. An equipment malfunction caused the plane to have to turn around shortly after takeoff. Passengers were told to get their possessions together, take their shoes off, and be ready to “adopt the break position.” Thankfully, the plane was able to return to the airport safely and no one on board was injured. However, after they landed, passengers were stuck on board for another three hours while maintenance workers looked at the plane. Enter Corden, who reportedly brought out his inner theater kid and entertained his fellow passengers, posing for selfies and having joking conversations with them. He even advocated for some of them once they were off the plane.
James Corden was photographed in a conversation with airline staff over the weekend, but fellow passengers from their “nightmare” flight are defending the actor and explaining what happened. When photos surfaced of James in the chat with airline staff, some reports implied that he was misbehaving, but that’s not the case at all. He was actually advocating for his fellow passengers!
James was flying from Faro, Portugal to London, England last week, but the plane had to return to Portugal after taking off and cruising below altitude for 45 minutes.
“Basically, what had happened was the flaps on the airplane wing which are supposed to go down when you are in the air won’t go down, which meant that they wouldn’t be able to raise them on landing,” a passenger named Vanessa told Metro.
The plane was held on the tarmac in Portugal for three hours before the plane was deemed unsafe to fly and all passengers were rescheduled for a flight the next day. During those three hours, James actually got out of his seat to entertain the other passengers and pose for selfies.
“He walked up and down the aisles talking to people, and let everybody take a selfie with him,” Vanessa said. “He was just really nice, he would have been well within his rights to sit and sulk in his seat like the rest of us would be doing but he didn’t.”
The altercation with airline staff happened after the flight when passengers were waiting in line to get rebooked. Vanessa revealed to Metro that only “club flyers or gold flyers” were offered free hotel rooms for the night while other travelers were left to fend for themselves. James decided that was unacceptable and advocated for all flyers to receive hotel rooms.
“James was a club flyer and he stood there, and was like, ‘What about all these people who’ve got all these kids with them?’ like saying that’s not acceptable. It’s not right,” she said.
James showed up the next day for the rescheduled flight and “stood in the same queue as everybody else, doing the same things as everybody else did.”
That entire situation sounds so scary. I know James is not without his issues, but it’s really nice that he helped keep everyone in good spirits as they waited. I’ve been on planes with maintenance issues before, where you’re sitting on board for an extended period of time, sometimes with no A/C, and never any real updates of what’s actually going on. Those passengers went through something really nerve wracking, I don’t understand why they couldn’t have deplaned while crews were out there looking at what was wrong with the plane. I’ve been trying to think about what celebrity I’d want to entertain me in a situation like that, and I can’t decide! I keep coming back to Robert Downey Jr being someone who would totally get up and out into the aisles to entertain, though.
I also cannot believe that British Airways wasn’t going to put the non-club members up in a hotel for the night after all of that. That’s so messed up. After what they went through, it was the least BA could do. It’s good to know that it isn’t just US airlines that pull crap like that. Ah, who am I kidding? If that was an American company, they would have found some stupid reason to blame weather on the plane breaking so they’d get out of compensating customers.
I was on this plane it was truly a traumatic experience and got even worse in the airport with no real direction from anyone especially @British_Airways who were nowhere in sight @JKCorden was NOT the bad guy in this. In fact he was amazingly calm 🙌🏻 https://t.co/HSwfgZnoxb
— Michelle Redmond (@michredz2510) June 4, 2024
Photos credit: PA Images/INSTARimages, Cat Morley / Avalon
I would say that this was a great coincidence for him to repair his image,he is a known elitist that treat the little people like crap. Maybe he has changed but if those stories hadn’t come out I doubt he would have been so eager.
ITA – he has always behaved like this, always and it was the reason he left the UK to go to the US as he was hated by the UK public and it cost him work.
Good for him for doing this but lets not kid ourselves – he saw a good PR opportunity.
Exactly 💯
He saw an opportunity for good PR….
He has a terrible reputation for treating certain fellow human beings like dirt, but I do applaud him here. As someone who lives across the ocean from where I was born, visiting friends and family involves air travel. I’ve had an instance where the plane wasn’t safe to fly and when they can’t repair it on time or get another plane, you spend hours at the airport. A 3 pm flight turns into crawling into a hotel around 2, not necessarily fed, and getting back to the airport by 5 am. That’s with a bed and a rescheduled flight… I completely appreciate that after getting off the plane, JC advocated for other passengers. This was a good deed.
Or you simply don’t hear about it usually when he is a nice guy.
This person only commented because the press published photos that made it look like he was being unreasonably angry with the staff. Otherwise the story would never have come out.
We’d all look terrible, if all people heard about us was when we were having a bad day, and not when we were nice.
He’s never been. Fact is the terrible stories go back 20 years or more so do you really think he had only bad days for 2 decades?
And no, I don’t treat people terribly when I have bad days because I’m not an a-hòle….
He’s been a known a-hòle since before he was famous.
He saw an opportunity to leak this story to the press in order to rehabilitate his image as he’s moved back to the UK and nobody wants him on. He’s more than a hot potato than Jeremy Clarkson, imagine how terrible he is as a person..
Good God, if I went through some thing as scary as that, and was then stuck on the plane for three hours, the absolute last thing in the world I would want is James Corden and his theater kid energy coming at me.
Conan O’Brien, on the other hand, would be a delight.
Conan = funny as all heck.
Corden = once a jerk, always a jerk.
Off topic, I love his wife’s outfit. She looks gorgeous and that’s the nicest thing I’ll say about her husband.
Same. I’d be hard pressed to remain civil, especially when f he started singing.
He really REALLY likes himself.
Three hours is just an unacceptable amount of time to be kept on a parked plane in any situation, but especially after you’ve been asked to prepare for the plane to crash on landing. Even if no gate is available, wheel that stairway out there and get those people off the plane.