BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE

A man from Loughmacrory has vowed never to step on another plane after his first venture on to an aircraft ended in him being banned by the airline.

26-year old farmer Conor Allen from Loughmacrory was embarking on his first flight to a tractor convention in England flying with Aer Lingus from Belfast City, when he became convinced that a full-scale emergency was underway.

“I’m tellin’ ye, it was terrifying hi. We were all sitting there in our seats quite the thing, lookin’ at the view out the windows and suchlike and then the wummin comes on the loudspeaker yolk all urgent-soundin’, telling us to get our seatbelts on. Jays, my life flashed in front of me. I thought we’d all been sent for. I admit it, I panicked big time boys. How was I to know they say that sort of thing all the time?”

The fact that Allen was panicked by the straightforward procedural announcement by the crew was made all the more embarrassing by the fact the plane had yet to leave the ground.

A sheepish Allen said,

“Look, I had had my eyes closed, sort of shutting everything out. When I opened my eyes and looked out the window all I could see was these tiny cars away below us on the ground looking like ants. Turns out they were ants. We hadn’t taken off. Some handlin’”.

Eye witnesses say that Allen flew into a blind panic and promptly leapt out of his seat yelling, “We’re doomed, we’re all doomed”, before jumping on top of the female passenger next to him, shouting, “Come on, we’ve only a few minutes left”, whilst taking off his wellies.

Allen’s defence that it was the airline’s fault that made him lose control of his self-restraint, his miniature box of Pringles, and also his bladder, left the airline unimpressed.

“We take safety very seriously”, said a spokesperson. “We tried to calm him down with a free Twix and a can of Magner’s which didn’t work, so we just tasered him in the arse with 40,000 volts. That quietened him down a bit”

Allen said that his flying days are now over, and that if he intends to travel to England again then he’ll do so by driving all the way.