Shola Lee
Seth MacFarlane and Mark Wahlberg were due to fly on the first plane that crashed into the Twin Towers in 2001.
This year marks the 21st anniversary of 9/11, and as people remember the 2,996 lost in the horrific attacks, tales of those who narrowly escaped have resurfaced.
Two such stories are that of MacFarlane and Wahlberg, who were due to fly on American Airlines flight 11, which was the one that crashed into the south tower.
Advert
MacFarlane was set to fly to Los Angeles on flight 11, but missed his boarding time.
There were two reasons for this, as MacFarlane told CNN: "It was a combination of two things, I was giving a lecture at my college the night before and went out with some of the faculty afterwards and had had a few pints."
When asked if he was drunk, MacFarlane said 'yes,' so a night out, in part, prevented the Family Guy creator from boarding the plane.
If you're wondering what the other reason was, MacFarlane explained it was the drinking 'coupled with the fact that my travel agent had listed the flight on my itinerary as leaving 10 minutes later than it did'.
"And I was I was generally late for flights. You know, I had missed a lot of flights prior to that. So it wasn't, wasn't like it was anything crazily out of the ordinary," he explained.
Yep, so some misinformation, a night out, and being generally late meant that MacFarlane avoided losing his life in the deadly attack.
In fact, MacFarlane was so close to boarding the plane that he only realised he had missed the flight when he got to the desk.
"I got to the counter, and I said, 'Yeah, I'm booked on flight 11'. And the woman behind the counter said 'I started you're too late'... they just closed the gate.
"And I said, 'All right, well, you know, I'll take the 11 o'clock'. I went into the lounge, fell asleep, woke up about 45 minutes later to a commotion. And the first plane had hit, and sat there and watched the second plane hit and they announced what flight it was.
"And I turned to the guy next to me and, and said, 'My God, I know that that was the flight I was supposed to be on. I was late. I missed it'."
And unbelievably, MacFarlane's Ted co-star Wahlberg was also supposed to be on that flight, but a late invite to the Toronto Film Festival meant that he quickly changed his travel plans.
Wahlberg came under fire years after the attack for telling Men's Journal: "If I was on that plane [flight 11] with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did."
He added: "There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘Okay, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry'."
Following the backlash, Wahlberg apologised for his comments.
If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via [email protected]