By Joe Myxter, travel editor
It sounds like a plot from a situation comedy: a pilot gets trapped in a lavatory, a well-meaning passenger with a foreign accent tries to assist, an untrusting co-pilot is unconvinced behind the cockpit door ?
But this scenario wasn?t imagined by any screenwriter. ?The situation played out onboard a Chautauqua Airlines flight, according to a report in the New York Post.
The captain was stuck in the plane?s lavatory due to a jammed door. In an attempt to get attention to land the plane ? in a holding pattern above LaGuardia airport ? the pilot pounded his fists on the lavatory door.
A passenger heard the pounding and approached to assist. The pilot urged the passenger to alert the cockpit crew of the situation.
The passenger, the Post reports, did as he was told, but was met with skepticism by the first officer.
?The captain has disappeared to the back and I have someone with a thick foreign accent trying to access the cockpit right now and I have to deal with the situation,? the co-pilot radioed to air traffic control. ?I?m not about to let him in.?
?You guys ought to declare an emergency and just get on the ground,? a controller told the co-pilot.
The captain eventually got himself out of the plane bathroom and got the situation back under control.
?Negative,? the captain responded when asked by air-traffic control of a threat. ?The captain, myself, went back to the lavatory and the door latch broke and I had to fight my way out of it with my body to get the door open.?
The FBI and Port Authority police were waiting for the jet when it landed, the Post reported.
Chautauqua Airlines is owned by Republic Airways Holdings. Telephone and e-mail messages from msnbc.com have not been returned.
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Joe Myxter has been running msnbc.com's Travel section since 2006. Follow him on Twitter.
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