Warning: This story contains content which some readers might find distressing
A student ended up sending out goodbye messages when she woke up inside a bus aboard a ferry.
Amal Said had taken a FlixBus from London to see her family in Paris in August when she drifted off to sleep. The 20-year-old was ‘really excited’ to be travelling over to France but was feeling a little tired after working the night before.
“I am Type 1 Diabetic and I got a Starbucks drink but I didn't think I needed food,” the student explained, as she had ended up falling asleep after going through passport control in Devon. “We went inside the ferry and I was clearly asleep. The protocol is we go in; everyone gets counted, everybody has to leave and they lock the doors.”
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With ‘no one’ allowed to stay at the deck, she assumed she would’ve been woken up when the bus was on the ferry.
"I woke up sweating, I heard my watch beep, which meant my sugar was low. I had a gel but needed something with carbs or sugar and I didn't have that,” Amal recalled.
"I was panicking because I was scared, I thought if I die on this FlixBus it won't be a good thing.”
Claiming to have woken up on the empty bus on the fifth deck half an hour after it had set sail, the student took videos as ‘proof’ (which ended up going viral) as she sent clips to her family telling them she loved them.
"I was hyperventilating and I was full of sweat. I was panicking, crying, I genuinely thought I was going to die,” she continued.
"I almost passed out, I fell on the floor. I saw someone, a staff member and I was banging on the FlixBus window and he looked very surprised.”
They then apparently fetched the driver who she says asked: “Why were you sleeping? Who told you to sleep? I told everyone to get off.
Amal said the driver came across ‘aggressively’ and accused her of being to blame as he ‘shouted’ at her.
She added: “I told him I was diabetic, I could have died, never in my life have I had to say goodbye to my family. It was that bad. I was on the bus for an hour and a half."
Footage of the incident was shared online as Amal screamed and cried in her scary incident, vowing to never use the bus company again.
FlixBus commented on her post, sending her a TikTok message to apologise but she thinks it’s ‘empty’.
She formally complained to the company on 11 August to request a refund and compensation for the emotional distress, but emails reportedly show she was refused as she had ‘completed her journey’.
"I thought the video was funny but I found it weird when people are saying sleeping on a bus is weird,” Amal added. "I have my right to sleep where I want, was I doing anything inappropriate? I was sleeping on the bus I paid for."
With users saying it was a ‘crazy’ and ‘rude’ situation, some commented to say ‘FlixBus is not your alarm clock'.
FlixBus said in a statement to LADbible: "We regret that a passenger remained on board a service during a ferry crossing. The driver made the standard announcement to disembark, carried out a check of the vehicle before leaving, and apologised to the passenger after discovering she was still on board. We are working closely with our operating partner to ensure additional measures are in place to prevent this from happening again. We have been in contact with the passenger to apologise and provide a full refund."
Jess Battison