Professional violinist delights passengers on delayed flight

When passengers on a flight to Lisbon had to make an emergency stop in Porto for unknown reasons, tension was inevitably in the air.

Fortunately for these lucky passengers however, a professional violinist was on board and on hand with his Stradivarius – and his beautiful playing proved the perfect antidote to all the stress.

That exquisite music, a rendition of some Bach, was played by violinist and YouTuber Ray Chen.

“Now at the time I must confess that playing the violin was the last thing on my mind,” Chen wrote on Instagram. “But knowing personally how stressful delayed travel days are, I decided to whip out the Strad for a good old airplane performance.

“The flight eventually made it to Lisbon (three hours after the scheduled time) and I’m just happy we were able to get there all safely in the end.”

Chen, who is Taiwanese-Australian, won the International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition in 2008, has released three critically acclaimed albums with Sony and has tens of thousands of followers on Twitter and Instagram.

Passenger Didi, who lives in The Hague, the Netherlands, was on the flight from Amsterdam and posted the video of Chen to Twitter.

“Within five to seven (minutes) of having landed, we heard his voice instead of the stewardess’s announcing he was a violinist and he would play something for us to make the best out of a bad situation,” she told the Press Association.

“It was only after we landed in Lisbon that I googled who he was and realised how lucky we were to have him entertain us during our emergency landing.”