There’s nothing funny about this.
California comedian Adam Conover wasn’t laughing when his flight from Los Angeles International Airport to London’s Heathrow Airport was diverted midair Thursday, as massive fires engulfed the electrical substation at Europe’s busiest flight hub.
After less than four hours in the air, the American Airlines flight returned to LAX at 10:17 p.m. – much to Conover’s dismay, as he is due to perform in a sold-out, stand-up gig at London’s Leicester Square Theatre Saturday night.
Luckily, his manager’s assistant – “a heroic woman named Maddy,” he said – managed to book him an alternate itinerary.
“I went back home…I watched the ‘Severance’ finale, got 3 hours sleep, went back to LAX, and now I’m on my way to [John F. Kennedy International Airport],” the 42-year-old “Adam Ruins Everything” star told The Post via text from the plane Friday afternoon.
After a four-hour layover at JFK Friday evening, Conover plans to take a flight to Manchester, then board a two-hour train to the British capital.
“Normally when there’s an air travel story like this in the news you think, ‘Wow it must have sucked to be in the air for that.’ This time it happened to me,” he texted.
During his upcoming performance, “I am going to tell the audience, ‘You better enjoy this show – I went through hell to bring it to you,” Conover said, adding, “I think both Brits and Americans need to laugh about how f—ked air travel is right now.”
Unfortunately for Conover and other travelers, disgruntled passengers impacted by the flight disruptions crowded and formed long lines to speak with British Airways customer service agents at JFK Friday afternoon.
“We’re ready to go home – we really don’t want to be here anymore,” Harriet Swarbrack, a tourist who had been visiting the Big Apple since Monday, told The Post from inside the terminal.
Swarback and her friend, Danielle Llewellyn, were three hours into a flight from JFK to Heathrow Thursday when the captain announced the diversion.
“At this point, we’ll go to any city in Europe, but no one is being helpful in rebooking us,” Swarback lamented.
JFK is Heathrow’s busiest travel route, with around 146 flights to and from the Queens airport per week, according to plane tracking website FlightRadar24.
Heathrow is expected to be completely up and running again by Saturday morning, the airport’s CEO, Thomas Woldbye, said Friday.
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