Hopefully calling BS.
I have to fly a lot for work and fly 2-3 r/t flights a year for vacation as well. Having status helps make flying more bearable and flying first class makes it a lot more bearable but it’s never fun. While I completely understand the overbooking due to no-shows & connecting misses, they know about it before boarding starts and should start offering compensation well before this takes place.
Looks like Delta wanted to double dip, as the man had already paid for a son’s seat. They told him to hold the kid on his lap during the flight so they could sell the seat again.
It sounds more like a question of whether or not a this family can switch user of the seat or not. They bought tickets for the mom, dad, and a teenage son. They had planned for the two toddlers to sit in the parents laps. The teenage son decides to fly on a different flight. We are not told whether or not he trades in his original ticket for the ticket on the new flight or if a whole new ticket was purchased, so we do not know if the parents still actually have a ticket for a third seat on their flight. And even if the teenager did buy a whole new ticket, it now becomes the question of can a different passenger (his baby brother) use the abandoned ticket? I seem to remember that there is a hard rule that ONLY the person named on the ticket at purchase may use that ticket.
Update, 5/4, 5:25 p.m: Delta has responded with the following statement:
"We are sorry for the unfortunate experience our customers had with Delta, and we've reached out to them to refund their travel and provide additional compensation. Delta's goal is to always work with customers in an attempt to find solutions to their travel issues. That did not happen in this case and we apologize."
I want Delta sued. This kind of threat is unacceptable. Millions of dollars in damages, and bankrupt Delta. To hell with them.
Thread from yesterday with 198 comments
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3550069/posts
SoCal family thrown off overbooked Delta flight over child’s seating
Listening to the entire video, here’s the story:
The couple have three children (a teenager, a 1 year old, and a two year old,) and they purchased four tickets. The one year old was supposed to be a ‘lap child’ that would share a seat with an adult.
Apparently the one year old was a problem sitting on a lap for six hours, so they wanted another seat to put him in a car seat.
The couple decided to purchase another ticket on an earlier flight for their oldest to fly separately, and use the empty seat for their 1 year old.
But since the older child “Mason” did not check in, Delta sold the seat to another passenger, and demanded that the infant, who was checked in as a lap child, move to a parent’s lap so the standby passenger could be accommodated.
Delta was technically in the right, because since 9/11 you cannot just arbitrarily transfer a ticket to someone else without doing so through the airline.
I suspect that changing the name on the ticket would have involved a rebooking fee and probably have to pay the difference between the original booking and a last minute purchase. (Which is also probably why Delta wanted to sell the seat to the standby passenger. Mo money.)
I think the Delta staff erred in many ways.
I am wondering though what the gate staff would have done if the parents, before boarding, told Delta their ticketed oldest son would not be boarding, due to other plans, and what they - the parents, expected to do with his reserved seat.
Would they insist, due to regulations or their rules, that no matter that THEY had paid for the seat, it had to be occupied by the passenger named on the ticket? Would they said that and let them know before boarding they’d have to stick to their original plan of seating the younger children in their laps, as they expected to do originally? And then would the whole mess have been avoided? Maybe.
Regardless, the behavior of the Delta staff, threatening jail and parental loss of the children was atrocious.
United did about the same thing to me. My 10 year old son was not allowed on a plane. And I was. And the flight took off with his seat empty. Airline workers suck. They get harried, and then start hiding behind stupid rules that are applied poorly. If the workers can’t handle the stress of the job, they should find another job.
That would be a felony on Delta’s employees part.