Brit found living in Polish AIRPORT for three weeks pestering travellers for cash in echo of Tom Hanks film The Terminal
A BRITISH man has caused uproar in Poland after spending the last three weeks pestering travellers after living inside an airport.
The man – known only as Prince N – has been reported to cops on numerous occasions for being rude and aggressive to passengers in Katowice airport.
He reportedly flew from Leeds Bradford airport on January 1, to Poland and was supposed to catch a connecting flight to Abu Dhabi.
But the Brit never hopped onto another plane and has stayed in the airport ever since – echoing Tom Hanks in the blockbuster 2004 film The Terminal.
The Hollywood movie was inspired by Iranian national Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived in Terminal 1 of the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for a staggering 18 years.
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Those who have come across the man have also complained that he begs for food despite him appearing to have enough money to pay for himself.
He has refused to leave the popular hub in Pyrzowice in the south of Poland since not paying for his checked baggage at the beginning of the new year.
A Polish newspaper has also launched an appeal to identify the tourist, asking: “Are you looking for this British guy?”
Police have come out and said they are powerless to deport him even though they’ve detained him twice and have taken him for questioning a whopping 14 times.
Regular travellers took to local media to voice their concerns over the man and complain about his attitude.
One unnamed Polish native said: “A man who came from Great Britain has been staying at the Katowice airport for three weeks.
“He behaves strangely, is sometimes pushy and becomes aggressive. The airport services do nothing about it. The police take this man away, but he comes back. We are powerless.”
A shop worker inside the busy and bustling airport also noticed that despite the man coming across as poverty stricken to others he has at least one bank card.
The watchful woman said: “At first I thought he was a poor, lost man to whom something bad had happened, perhaps going through some sort of crisis.
“He said he was hungry and waiting for someone to send him money. I went with him to one of the cafes and bought him a sandwich. The next day I offered him tea.”
He got angry and started screaming. I got scared and called security.
Shop keeper at Katowice airport
The woman was then caught by surprise when she saw him being rude to other customers and forced her into calling security on him.
She continued: “When I asked him not to do that, he got angry and started screaming. I got scared and called security.
“After my shift, I went to see my friends who work in a cafe. They told me that he also comes to them. They felt sorry for him too.
“But when after a few days they didn’t give him any more food, the man took out his card and paid.”
Another added: “Mostly he sleeps at the airport, sometimes he goes somewhere. He washes himself in the airport bathroom and spends the whole day there.
“But this man accosts travellers, argues, is impudent and thinks he is entitled to everything.
“We’ve had enough of this. Someone even came up with the idea of giving him a ticket to fly away. When we asked if we could help him in this way, he refused.”
Kamil Kubica, a press spokesman for the Tarnowskie Góry police, said the man had previously been booted out of a hotel in the area for vandalising his room.
She added: “Due to the interests of the ongoing proceedings, I can’t add much more.”
Piotr Adamczyk, spokesman for Katowice Airport, also released a statement saying: “The passenger caught our attention with his behaviour, he was aggressive towards customers and airport employees.
“Due to the above, services were called to him several times, i.e. the Border Guard and the police. Each time the police detained him for 48 hours.
“We informed the British Embassy in Warsaw about the situation, which offered the opportunity to purchase a ticket for its citizen for a return flight to his homeland.
“Mr. Prince N. was not interested in this.”
Life in an airport
This isn’t the first time someone has lived inside an airport after Mehran Karimi Nasseri did so back in 1988.
Between then and 2006, Mehran was stuck in legal limbo because he had the wrong residency papers meaning he wasn’t allowed to board a plane.
He decided to stay in the Paris airport and became a worldwide story for his way of life that saw him often eat McDonald’s for dinner and spend his days writing in a journal on his infamous red bench.
His story went on to inspire the Steven Spielberg‘s comedy-drama film The Terminal starring Tom Hanks.
Hanks plays a man trapped in JFK airport after being denied entry to the US but his life gets turned on its head when he’s also banned from returning home to the fictional eastern European state of Krakozhia, due to a military coup.
Mehran tragically died in 2022 after suffering a heart attack inside the airport.
