Little girl initiates conversation with co-traveller on flight; Twitter thread wins heart

In a cute encounter, a little girl initiated a conversation with a complete stranger on her trip. The stranger, Kati Hartwig, was flying from Columbus, Ohio when she met her "seat mate," a 6-year-old who decided to strike up a chit chat. Hartwig posted the sweet incident in a series of Twitter threads, which caught netizens' attention and that of the airlines as well.

Both the travellers boarded Southwest Airlines to travel to Florida when they met each other. The little girl, identified as Shawnee, was very excited about her trip after a considerable lockdown period. "I am going to talk to your randomly so you need to be prepared, Okay," baby Shawnee comforted Hartwig. As mentioned in the tweets, young Shawnee helped Hartwig to choose aesthetic profile photos for her social media as well. "Yeah, keep the camera there. That way I can see out the window," she directed.

Shawnee was quirky and had something to say about everything. Her spectrum of knowledge expanded from in-flight food to COVID-19 pandemic, Hartwig informed. Hartwig, who is a social media manager at Columbus Airport, was impressed by the young travellers cute yet intelligent presence. "She is an absolute gem," Hartwig posted. She also requested the airline to offer some chicken "wings" to Shawnee after she mesmerized Hartwig with her comment about who should people thank for the resumption of international flights. "Hey Kati, you know what everyone should do when they get on the plane? Thank Wright Brothers," Shawnee said.

Hartwig also adored her choice of films and TV shows. She insisted viewers to believe that Shawnee is much ahead of her age in terms of television content. "I think she is actually older than me, tbh," Hartwig wrote. Last but not the least, little Shawnee helped Hartwig to ease during the in-flight motions. "They're tilting us so we can see better! How nice," Shawnee exclaimed.

Netizens delighted with the conversation

Twitteratis expressed delightfulness after reading the sweet interaction between the two passengers despite the age gap. While some enjoyed reading the conversation and “madly fell in love” with little Shawnee and dropped heart emojis in the comment section, there were some who questioned the authenticity of the incident. Responding to the trolls, Kati uploaded a video that was suggested by little Shawnee and explained that she did not upload the picture of the girl keeping her age in mind.

The thread amassed over 400k views after it was uploaded on Saturday, August 7. After the thread went viral, Southwest Airlines retweeted the thread and asked other passengers to share their experiences with their "seat mates". "Kati will go first," they jokingly wrote.

With inputs from @KatiHartwig/Twitter

Image: Shutterstock/representative