After a man had his flight diverted in Italy, he was sent on a dizzying journey where he could not board another flight for two days and had to sleep at the airport

03.08.2023 - 01:43 / insider.com

Brian Parsa was enjoying a vacation in Europe last month with his girlfriend when, suddenly, everything fell apart.

Parsa told Insider the two were flying on the low-cost airline Volotea from France to Croatia on July 22 when the plane was diverted to Italy because of inclement weather. He would then be stranded in a small Italian town for two days.

The 24-year-old dental student captured the pinnacle of his travel frustrations in a 4 a.m. TikTok video that has been viewed over 600,000 times. The video was taken at the Brindisi Airport in Italy, where he had already been stuck for a day.

"Well, I think I have the worst luck in the fucking world," Parsa said in the video. "There is absolutely no-fucking-one here." The TikToker pans across an empty airport terminal before recounting the tiring saga that brought them there.

Before the incident, Parsa's trip was going well, he said. Midway through the Volotea flight, the captain made an announcement in French, which the couple did not fully understand, he said. However, when they looked out their window and saw scary lightning dotting the horizon, they realized the severity of the situation.

"There was crazy turbulence; we started freaking out a little bit," he said.

Instead of landing in Dubrovnik, Croatia, the plane was forced to travel an extra couple of hours to dock in Brindisi, a port city on the coast of the Adriatic Sea in Italy. Parsa said they weren't sweating the situation too much initially since they were told they would be put on another flight the following day. They were also placed in a hotel to sleep for the night. 

The next day, July 23, they waited in the hotel lobby with everyone else from the flight for a bus to bring them back to the Brindisi airport, Parsa said. But the bus never came, and instead, they received a text saying the plane would be leaving the next day.

They decided to explore the surrounding area to buy time, but later that day, Parsa said he received yet another text with a new directive: The plane to Croatia will be leaving that same day, July 23. So the pair hustled back to the airport.

The plane was scheduled to leave at midnight, but leading up to the departure, rumors started circulating that the plane was overbooked and not everyone would be able to board it. 

"Naturally, everyone starts to panic," Parsa recalled. "There were a few older French women who were on the ground crying in pain, and other people were screaming, people were pushing. It was a mess."

When it was Parsa and his girlfriend's turn to board, he said they weren't given a ticket and that he had no idea why they weren't chosen as the selection seemed "completely random."

That flight, which departed several hours past midnight, left 15 people