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When a Southwest pilot held a plane for a man who was traveling to be with his daughter in the wake of his granddaughter’s murder, the media erupted with joy. Some people even went as far as calling the pilot a hero. I suppose it’s no surprise, though I can only shake my head and grind my teeth at such loose use of the word.

Heartwarming tales like this one gain a power of their own, and simple actions can be turned into insanely overblown feats of awesomeness. In 25 years, they might call this man a saint for what he did; simply holding an airplane for 12 minutes may morph into him deciding to turn an airplane around against all odds after it took off just to pick this man up. Why do I say that? It’s happened before and will happen again.

Case in point. Peter Greenberg wrote about this Southwest pilot here on BNET. He told a tale of a story that he “wrote years ago.” Too bad this one doesn’t pass the sniff test.

Peter recounts that a passenger was flying on the last flight of the day from Minneapolis to Chicago. He stopped the pilot and told him that he was going to Chicago only to spend the night and fly to Rochester, Minnesota in the morning to get his sick son to the Mayo Clinic. I’ll let him take it from there.

“I looked at the route map in your inflight magazine,” the father said, “and noticed you fly right over Rochester on the way to Chicago. Do you think you could just stop and drop us off?”

The pilot thought about it. Then he called air traffic control and explained the situation. Could they possible [sic] route his flight with a stop in Rochester and still get him to Chicago just a little late? After all, it was the last flight of the day and no passengers were connecting to onward flights.

The word from the ATC: Go for it.

In the end, the pilot asked the passengers for permission and they unanimously agreed. And to add a cherry to this sundae, the flight still arrived in Chicago 10 minutes early.

It’s definitely a warm and fuzzy story, but there are so many holes in it that it could double as Swiss cheese.

If this pilot really wanted to help the passenger get to the Mayo Clinic, he should have given him cab fare. The Mayo Clinic is a mere 80 miles on a straight shot from Minneapolis/St Paul Airport. So the idea that someone was taking his sick child to the Mayo Clinic via an overnight in Chicago is downright absurd.

There’s also the issue of why Northwest, an airline with a massive hub in Minneapolis, would route someone via Chicago anyway. The airline did fly from Chicago to Rochester at one point, but it’s been 25 years or more since that happened. Northwest has, however, long had nonstops between Minneapolis and Rochester going all day long. That continues today despite the short distance.

But if that’s not enough, I’ve never heard of anyone asking air traffic control for permission to go somewhere. Sure, if it’s a congested airport and there are weather problems then you may be delayed going into that airport, but I think we can all assume that Rochester has never had that problem. And can we really believe that there was enough schedule padding that long ago that even with a time-consuming stop, the flight would have arrived 10 minutes early? How much of this story could possibly be true?

That’s hard to say, but by now it’s traveled through multiple mouthpieces, likely amplified every single time to get to the point it’s at now. It’s become a tall tale, and Peter ran with it here. (I asked him multiple times for a copy of the original story he wrote, but he was unable to provide one.)

In the end, people simply like to latch on to stories that warm the cockles, and this is certainly one of them. But as time passes, these stories aren’t necessarily closely tied to reality. Should stories like this become reality more often? I doubt it’s even possible, but certainly things like holding a plane for 12 minutes should happen from time to time. Oh wait, it already does happen all the time.

People at Southwest and other airlines decide to hold flights day in and day out for one reason or another. I don’t want to take anything away from the captain at Southwest who made the decision to hold the flight. That was a great thing to do, but a delayed connection, a late customer running through security; these are all things that happen on a daily basis and airline employees rarely get credit for it. I guess the right combination of a heartbreaking story, a great quote, and some media coverage can create a story (real or not) that lasts forever.

Update: Thanks to reader FBKSan who found the original article from Peter Greenberg in 1990! As I responded in the comments, there were a ton of inconsistencies:

Thanks FBKSan!

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