Ginger McGuire fell asleep on a redeye from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia early Tuesday morning, only to wake up hours after the plane landed and passengers exited.
Thursday morning McGuire showed up at a press conference with the man who defended Jack Kevorkian, famed Michigan attorney Geoffrey Fieger, announcing her lawsuit against United Airlines and Trans States Airlines.
McGuire, a Detroit-area radio station and local cable channel employee from Ferndale, Mich., described her experience of waking up at 3:50 a.m. on a flight that landed at 12:27 a.m. as “horrifying.”
“Waking up to an empty airplane and not being able to get out was very horrifying,” McGuire said in the press conference captured by WDIV-TV Detroit. “It’s a very dramatic word but it was…it was a little much.”
Unlike previous reports that stated she was awakened by a cleaning crew, McGuire told the Detroit News that she awoke to see no one on the plane and walked up and down the aisle for 15 minutes. She said she didn’t think of calling for help.
“Then the door to the airplane opened and two Philadelphia police officers were standing there with a TSA officer,” McGuire told the Detroit News. “They wouldn't let me off the plane until I proved who I was. It was like, ‘Show us your ID, show us your ID.’”
Her lawsuit filed by Fieger claims the airlines are guilty of negligence, false imprisonment, emotional distress and breech of contract.
“For a crew of United Airlines and Trans State Airlines to leave her there, and lock her in a plane, is beyond unacceptable, beyond a gross abuse, it constitutes a false imprisonment,” Fieger said in the press conference.
