Free to Fly

A chance encounter with an airline employee allows a struggling student to start living the dream life of a jet-setting playboy.

Photos by Carlos Detres

An American and a Swedish man go on a coffee date in Stockholm. They spend the weekend dancing in the city’s most exclusive clubs, alongside Eurovision hopefuls and Swedish celebrities. To an outsider, it would look like an ordinary fling. But an outsider would have no way of knowing that the American, Johnny Bartz, was in San Francisco the morning of that first date, and would return there when the weekend was through. He met his date on OkCupid a few days prior, having little idea what he actually looked like and no intention of pursuing anything more than a good time.

“I had no idea what would happen,” he says. “I did no planning.”

As he flew from California to Stockholm, Bartz had no means of contact with his date—no phone number, let alone a phone. He had only a prearranged pickup time with the near-stranger at the Stockholm central station. For Bartz, it was just a matter of showing up to the airport and getting on the plane—the kind of snap decision that he…