BEING LATE 2 MINUTES SAVED MAN’S LIFE

Greek man was travelling to Nairobi to attend UN meeting

AGREEK man said on Sunday he would have been the 150th passenger on the Nairobibound Ethiopian Airlines Boeing plane that crashed killing all on board, except he arrived two minutes late for the flight.

“I was mad because nobody helped me to reach the gate on time,” Antonis Mavropoulos said in a Facebook post titled “My lucky day”, in which he includes a photo of his ticket.

Mavropoulos, president of the International Solid Waste Association, a non-profit organisation, was travelling to Nairobi to attend the annual assembly of the United Nations Environment Programme, according to Athens News Agency.

He was supposed to board the plane but he reached the departure gate just two minutes after it was closed.

He booked a later flight but was then prevented from boarding by airport staff.

“They led me to the police station of the airport. The officer told me not to protest but to pray to God because I was the only passenger that didn’t board the ET 302 flight that was lost,” Mavropoulos said in his post, in which he admits being in shock.

The airport authorities said they wanted to question him because he was the only passenger in the flight who wasn’t on board.

“They said they couldn’t let me go before checking my identity, the reason I hadn’t boarded the plane etc.”