Nashville Man Steps Up To Stop In-Flight Bullying

NASHVILLE, TN -- Sitting in an airplane seat, Savannah Phillips was fighting back tears, shaking as she was silently crying, another human's cruelty having cut her deeply.

But in a matter of moments, that void would be filled back up and Phillips would meet the man she calls a hero: the manager of a Lower Broadway bar in Nashville.

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This week, Phillips shared her story on Facebook. It began with a storm and a rescheduled flight and ended with proof that good people outnumber the bad.

Phillips was flying from Oklahoma to Chicago, but got bumped to an earlier flight because of bad weather. A frequent flier, she wrote she prefers to choose her own seat.

"I always try to sit in a row where I don’t have to sit next to anyone. I’m not the biggest person on the airplane, but I’m not the smallest. My worst nightmare is someone being uncomfortable because they have to sit next to me," she wrote.

Her rowmate was a self-described comedian who, during the safety speech, texted that he was sitting next to a "smelly fatty," Phillips wrote. The "comedian" had his screen brightness all the way up, an enlarged font size and was holding his phone just inches from Phillips' face.

"I turned my head away as fast as I could," she wrote. "I was shocked and it was like confirmation of the negative things I think about myself on a daily basis. Before I knew it, I could feel hot, salty tears coming down my face. I sat and cried silently, hoping this guy didn’t try to make small talk, because I didn’t trust how I would react and I didn’t want to get kicked off the plane. I was so hurt. The pilot came overhead and said there would be a 30 minute delay before he could take off- great."

During the delay, she saw a finger tap on the shoulder of the wiseguy next to her and voice say "Hey, I need to talk to you."

Phillips said the man behind her, in not-so-gentle terms, told the funny guy that he saw him texting and he wasn't going to put up with it. He called him a "heartless person."

"A guy comes and sits next to me and is shocked when he sees me crying. He asked if I saw the texts and I nodded yes. He encouraged me not to let that guy get to me and that everything was going to be fine," Phillips wrote. "He said he just happened to see that guy’s text messages he started shaking he was so mad and knew he had to do something. He stopped the flight attendant and told her what he was about to do. ... The flight attendant kept trying to give him free drinks and told him that he was her hero. He wasn’t her hero- he was mine."

Phillips only learned the man's first name - Chase - and where he worked - Dierks Bentley's Whiskey Row in Nashville. But in the age of the internet - the post has nearly 3,000 likes and more than 800 shares - that's more than enough to track down the do-gooder.

Chase Irwin is the general manager of the nightspot and he told NewsChannel 5 when he saw the text, he got angry and nauseous.

"I was going to wait until the end of the flight to say something but I could not have this guy sit next to her this whole flight and her thinking he's making fun of her," Irwin told the station. "It really gets to me deep down when I see someone crying, and when I saw her crying it really hit me hard and actually got sick to my stomach."

Check out Savannah Phillips' post:

Image via Shutterstock