The Passenger Who Never Arrived: Flight 2473's Extra Traveler

On December 17, 1991, Western Pacific Airlines Flight 2473 departed from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport bound for Sacramento International Airport. The Boeing 737-300 carried 112 passengers and 5 crew members on what should have been a routine 90-minute journey. What unfolded instead became one of commercial aviation's most disturbing unsolved mysteries—a case that remains classified as "incident unresolved" in FAA records to this day.

The Routine Flight

Flight 2473 was scheduled to depart at 8:35 PM, but due to minor mechanical issues, boarding didn't commence until 9:10 PM. Ground crew records confirm the flight eventually departed at 9:47 PM with Captain Robert Halderman and First Officer Teresa Liu at the controls. Weather conditions were reported as clear with light turbulence expected.

The passenger manifest, verified through three separate checkpoints, listed 112 passengers. This number was confirmed during the pre-takeoff headcount by lead flight attendant Diane Sawyer (no relation to the journalist), who noted in her preflight report that "all seats are accounted for with no irregularities."

The first two hours of the flight proceeded normally. Then, at approximately 11:15 PM, the first unusual incident occurred.

The Man in Seat 13F

According to flight attendant Michael Carradine's written statement, submitted on December 18, 1991:

"I was conducting a final beverage service before our descent when I noticed a passenger in seat 13F who hadn't been served. He was a middle-aged man, maybe 40-45, with salt-and-pepper hair and glasses, wearing a gray suit. Very polite, soft-spoken. He declined a beverage but asked how much longer until landing. I remember thinking it was odd I hadn't noticed him earlier since I'd served that entire section during the first service."

Carradine's observation might have been dismissed as a simple oversight, except for what happened during landing preparation. Flight attendant Sawyer approached the same passenger to verify his seatbelt was fastened and later reported:

"The gentleman smiled and thanked me, mentioning that he was looking forward to seeing his daughter in Sacramento. He showed me a photo of a young woman, maybe college-aged. I distinctly remember his British accent and his unusual watch—it had an oversized face with what looked like astronomical markings. I remember thinking it was an interesting conversation given how brief it was."

Flight 2473 landed at Sacramento International at 11:32 PM without incident. As passengers disembarked, both Sawyer and Carradine noted seeing the man from 13F exit with the others. Neither thought anything unusual had occurred until the next morning.

The Discrepancy

During routine post-flight procedures on December 18, Western Pacific's administrative staff noticed a discrepancy. The arrival count at Sacramento showed 112 passengers had disembarked—matching the departure manifest. However, the beverage service receipts and meal counts indicated service for 113 individuals.

This minor discrepancy prompted a review of the onboard camera footage (Western Pacific had recently installed rudimentary security cameras in the cabin areas on some of their aircraft). When Operations Manager Thomas Wendell reviewed the footage, he found something disturbing enough to immediately contact the FAA and FBI.

According to Wendell's official statement:

"The security footage clearly shows passengers in seats 13A through 13E and 13G through 13J. However, seat 13F, while seemingly occupied during interactions with flight attendants, appears empty on all wide-angle footage of that cabin section. This is technically impossible given the camera angles and is likely a recording malfunction."

The FBI's preliminary investigation revealed something even more inexplicable: seat 13F shouldn't have existed at all. The aircraft configuration for that specific Boeing 737-300 (Tail Number N377WP) had a row 13 with seats A through E on the left and G through J on the right. There was no seat F in that row due to the emergency exit configuration.

The Passenger Interviews

In January 1992, the FBI interviewed 64 passengers from Flight 2473. Of these, 36 independently recalled interactions with or observations of a man matching the description given by the flight attendants—a middle-aged male with graying hair, glasses, and a British accent.

Passenger Elaine Murphy, who sat in 13E, provided this statement:

"He sat next to me for the entire flight. We chatted about his work—something in physics or engineering, I think. He mentioned his daughter at UC Davis and showed me a photo. What struck me as odd was how he knew it was my first flight in several years. I don't recall mentioning that to him."

Margaret and David Keller, seated in 14E and 14F directly behind 13F, both recalled the man:

"He was very quiet except when speaking directly to someone. I remember he helped my husband retrieve our bag from the overhead compartment. He had an unusual way of speaking—very precise, almost formal English. When we landed, he mentioned being glad to 'finally arrive,' as though the short flight had been a much longer journey."

Perhaps most disturbing was the statement from Dr. Raymond Chen, a physics professor from the University of Washington who had been seated in 12G:

"I only spoke with him briefly while waiting for the restroom, but I distinctly remember his unusual knowledge of quantum mechanics. When I mentioned my field of study, he described theoretical work that, frankly, doesn't exist yet. I assumed he was a colleague I hadn't met. The equations he casually mentioned—I've been thinking about them since. They're either nonsense or... well, beyond our current understanding."

The Missing Evidence

The FBI investigation might have provided answers if not for two significant setbacks. On February 3, 1992, a server failure at Western Pacific's headquarters corrupted the passenger manifest digital records for several December flights, including 2473. While paper backups existed, the specific copy for Flight 2473 was reported missing from the airline's filing system.

More concerning was the fate of the security footage. On February 10, 1992, FBI Agent Daniel Morrison reported that the video evidence, stored at the Sacramento field office, had become "corrupted beyond recovery" with no explanation. In his report, Morrison noted:

"The digital distortion appears most prominently around the timestamps corresponding to any wide-angle view of row 13. Technical specialists report this pattern of degradation is 'statistically improbable' and unlike any corruption they've previously encountered."

With both the passenger manifest and video evidence compromised, the investigation stalled. By April 1992, the case was designated "unexplained but non-threatening" and effectively shelved.

The Photograph

The case might have remained closed if not for an unusual discovery three years later. In May 1995, Western Pacific Airlines was preparing to merge with another carrier, requiring a comprehensive audit of all equipment. During inventory at their Seattle maintenance facility, a maintenance worker discovered a Nikon camera in the life vest storage compartment under seat 13F of aircraft N377WP—the same plane that had operated Flight 2473.

The camera contained a single roll of partially exposed film. When developed, eleven photos were recovered. Ten showed typical tourist images of Seattle landmarks. The eleventh image, however, showed the cabin interior of a Boeing 737, focused on a row of passengers. According to photography experts, the image appeared to be taken from the perspective of seat 13F, though no photographer is visible in the adjacent seats' reflective surfaces.

Most disturbing was the flight attendant visible in the photo's background. Diane Sawyer confirmed it was her, in the exact uniform she wore on December 17, 1991. The photo showed her serving row 11—approximately 15 minutes before her interaction with the passenger in 13F, according to her original timeline.

The FBI reopened the investigation briefly but found no fingerprints on the camera and no way to determine who had taken the photographs or placed the camera on the aircraft.

The Daughter

The most recent development in the Flight 2473 mystery occurred in 2004. Dr. Elizabeth Harrison, a quantum physics researcher at UC Davis, published a groundbreaking paper on theoretical time displacement. During a subsequent interview with Scientific American, she mentioned her inspiration:

"My interest in temporal physics began after a strange experience in college. In December 1991, I was at Sacramento International waiting for my father, who I hadn't seen in years. He never arrived, but several passengers from the flight described speaking with a man who had shown them my photo. The descriptions matched my father perfectly, including details of a watch I'd given him. The problem is, my father had died three years earlier in 1988."

When shown the passenger descriptions from the FBI interviews, Dr. Harrison confirmed they matched her late father, Dr. James Harrison, a British physicist who had died in a laboratory accident. The watch descriptions matched a unique timepiece of his own design that had been buried with him.

Most unsettling was Dr. Harrison's response to the equations recalled by Professor Chen from his brief interaction with the mystery passenger: "Those equations form the foundation of my current research. They're from my father's unfinished work—theoretical calculations that were never published."

The Ongoing Mystery

To date, 36 people maintain they interacted with a passenger in seat 13F—a seat that didn't officially exist on an aircraft configuration that couldn't accommodate him. No record of his boarding remains, no security footage confirms his presence, and the only physical evidence is a photograph taken from an impossible perspective.

Western Pacific Airlines ceased operations in 1998 following its merger, and much of their internal documentation was lost in subsequent corporate transitions. The original Boeing 737-300 (N377WP) was decommissioned in 2002 and scrapped, eliminating any possibility of further forensic examination.

The Flight 2473 case remains classified as an "unexplained anomaly" in closed FAA records. Former FBI Agent Morrison, now retired, offered this reflection in a 2015 interview with an aviation history researcher:

"In thirty years with the Bureau, I investigated everything from hijackings to terrorism. Flight 2473 is the only case I cannot explain through any conventional understanding of reality. Either 36 people experienced the same detailed hallucination, or something was on that flight that shouldn't have been possible. I'm a rational man, but this case tested the limits of what I'm willing to call impossible."

For the passengers and crew of Flight 2473, the mystery remains deeply personal. Flight attendant Diane Sawyer, who left the airline industry in 1996, perhaps summarized it best:

"I've served over 500,000 passengers in my career. I remember exactly one of their faces with perfect clarity—a man whose friendly conversation and British accent stays with me to this day. The fact that records say he was never on my flight doesn't change what I know: I spoke with someone in seat 13F that night, whatever the manifest might claim."

Whether the man in 13F was a glitch in record-keeping, a shared delusion, or something far more inexplicable remains unanswered. For Dr. Elizabeth Harrison, the mystery carries a more poignant question: did she somehow, against all logical explanation, nearly miss a final meeting with her father—a man who had already been dead for three years when Flight 2473 landed in Sacramento?

The mystery of Flight 2473's extra traveler continues to haunt everyone connected to it, a reminder that even in our modern world of meticulous record-keeping and constant surveillance, some experiences defy conventional explanation.