My husband recently flew to South Dakota on Delta to bring my 4 children back from their grandparent’s house. He had booked a one connection flight (which costs more than a flight that requires more than one connection). Travelling with 4 children you would understand why you don’t want to have to load and unload too many times. This flight was booked months in advance of the trip and we were meticulous in ensuring they had seats that were together. About a week before the trip, Delta rerouted the plane resulting in a two connection flight. They did not offer any sort of compensation or price rebate. I view this as a “bait and switch tactic” where you get someone to pay for something and then switch a lower value product without fairly compensating the customer. My husband accepted the change as he did not want to cause any unnecessary friction. But wait that’s not the unbelievable part! In addition, he called Saturday morning before he left and asked why their seats weren’t assigned in Detroit (3rd and final leg of the flight). My husband had the phone on speaker and I heard the customer service representative state: “ Don’t worry you have a confirmed ticket they will assign you a seat at the gate. There is nothing to worry about.”
On their return flight home, they all made the first and second connections fine. My family boarded the airplane on the final leg. My husband and children (ages 6, 9, 13 and 15) were comfortably seated waiting to taxi when a steward told my husband he needed to leave the plane as there were 4 unaccompanied minors without a seat and the flight was overbooked. The explanation to my husband was that he did not have an assigned seat and was therefore the first to have to reschedule his flight. Of course my husband explained that he was traveling with our children. The steward was not fazed by this explanation. My youngest daughter became hysterical, but the steward was adamant that my husband must leave the plane to make room for an unaccompanied minor. I picked up my children without their father at the airport at 9:00 pm the evening of August 23rd.
How can something like this happen? I am not an advocate of a lot of government intervention but there is clearly something wrong with air travel. Flying is stressful enough without having to combat the very carrier you are flying on. No wonder tensions are getting so high that people are walking off flights, pulling emergency slides and performing other desperate actions that are becoming more frequent news. Flying has become an adversarial event and it is a dangerous ticking time bomb.
I have vowed to never fly Delta again, but how as a Mother do I take away those 2.5 hours of trauma from a 6 year old?` How can I make sure that this doesn’t happen to a
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