Two flight attendants fell in love on an airplane. Here’s what happened next

20.07.2023 - 12:17 / edition.cnn.com / Spirit Airlines / London Heathrow

On a recent transatlantic flight from Florida to London Heathrow, married flight attendants Hunter Smith-Lihas and John Lihas locked eyes across the aisle.

The two men smiled at each other, before swiftly returning to serving champagne to First Class travelers.

This shared smile was fleeting, but spoke volumes. And later, when Hunter and John were on break at the same time, the couple found themselves sitting in the onboard crew lounge, reflecting on the shared life and careers they’ve built together.

“I met you for five minutes on the airplane when I wasn’t even supposed to, and now we’re living in the city together, and you’re sitting across from me on the plane and we’re working together,” Hunter recalls saying to John.

“You never think when you meet someone for the first time like that, that it’d go this far. So it’s kind of surreal. And it honestly just makes you so happy, because you’re like, how did I get here?”

How Hunter and John got here was via a series of unexpected moments and decisions starting six years ago, in 2017.

Back then, Hunter was in his early 20s and working as a gate agent for Spirit Airlines. He’d aspired to work in aviation since he’d starting watching a travel vlogger who chronicled her job as a flight attendant on YouTube.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is the best job ever. I definitely want to do something like this,’” Hunter tells CNN Travel today.

After he graduated college, Hunter secured a gate staff position in his home city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The role was the perfect foot in the aviation door.

Working the airport gate, Hunter interacted with hundreds, if not thousands, of people each day. As a sociable person, he always enjoyed the conversations – however brief – with travelers and airline staff.

But Spirit Airlines’ employment pool was so big he rarely met the same flight attendants twice.

One morning, one of Hunter’s gate attendant coworkers asked if he could pass on some papers to the captain of a soon-to-depart Spirit flight, which was heading to Orlando, Florida.

This kind of task, says Hunter, was “typically not my job, I did not normally do that.”

But off he went, walking down the gangway and onto the aircraft. He passed on the paperwork to the captain and then waited for the all-clear to disembark. It didn’t come right away, so Hunter stood by the door, biding his time.

“There was some sort of delay in him processing the paperwork,” he recalls.

Also standing at the front of the aircraft was John, the flight attendant looking after the front half of the plane.

Back then, John was a total stranger to Hunter. Sure, they both worked for the same airline – but so did thousands of other people scattered across the United