Delta's turn

[NotUrsula]

The gotcha in the latest story is the child's age. The confrontation was taped, and the FA's are telling the father to hold the child on his lap. However, the claim is that the child is 2 years old. 2 yo are too old to legally be lap babies, it's an FAA regulation that they must have a purchased seat.

Delta hewed to the contract of carriage, and the family did apparently try to use the adult son's BP for the 2 yo so as to use the paid-for seat (assuming that the teen did not fly standby on the same ticket to get home on the earlier flight), so there is some fault with the father's argument in terms of Delta's contractual obligation to him, BUT not only is it a PR cost, but if the FAA has video evidence of Delta FAs actually instructing a passenger to lap-carry a 2 year old child, the fine is going to be a whopper.

BTW, for what it's worth, Delta declined to send a representative to this week's Congressional hearing on Airline customer treatment. UAL, AA, and SWA did send representatives, as did Alaska Air. Delta was the only no-show out of the top 5 US domestic carriers. The hearing video is up on C-Span, it's 4 hours long, but just listening to the audio is really funny, because the Representatives were truly PO'd. The airline reps from UAL and AA were doing some serious wriggling to try to dodge their questions. (The reps from SWA and Alaska were a lot more forthcoming, but then, those airlines haven't had a nasty customer service headline just lately.)

 

[bcla]

Must be a slow day in news for that to even have made it to a reporter's desk.

Even if you disregard the whole age limit thing- if they don't consider a lap baby to be safe, then why would they not BUY a seat for the kid to begin with.

Well - I've never actually flown with my kid as a lap infant, but my wife has. The cutoff for a lap infant is just under 2 years old. They will give the option to bring an approved car seat on board the plane and perhaps see if there's an empty seat to use it. If that doesn't work then they'll typically gate check the infant seat and the kid sits on a lap for the flight. They recommend buying a seat in the child's name to guarantee it. On top of that they won't require proof of age like they do for lap infants.

But the whole thing where they assumed that because their older son was originally booked on that flight for that seat and they could use his seat is bogus. Not sure if they paid for another ticket or not, but no matter what if their 18 year old didn't board that plane, they have no rights to keep another passenger (which is what apparently happened) from using that seat.

 

[pryncess527]

The gotcha in the latest story is the child's age. The confrontation was taped, and the FA's are telling the father to hold the child on his lap. However, the claim is that the child is 2 years old. 2 yo are too old to legally be lap babies, it's an FAA regulation that they must have a purchased seat.

Delta hewed to the contract of carriage, and the family did apparently try to use the adult son's BP for the 2 yo so as to use the paid-for seat (assuming that the teen did not fly standby on the same ticket to get home on the earlier flight), so there is some fault with the father's argument in terms of Delta's contractual obligation to him, BUT not only is it a PR cost, but if the FAA has video evidence of Delta FAs actually instructing a passenger to lap-carry a 2 year old child, the fine is going to be a whopper.

BTW, for what it's worth, Delta declined to send a representative to this week's Congressional hearing on Airline customer treatment. UAL, AA, and SWA did send representatives, as did Alaska Air. Delta was the only no-show out of the top 5 US domestic carriers. The hearing video is up on C-Span, it's 4 hours long, but just listening to the audio is really funny, because the Representatives were truly PO'd. The airline reps from UAL and AA were doing some serious wriggling to try to dodge their questions. (The reps from SWA and Alaska were a lot more forthcoming, but then, those airlines haven't had a nasty customer service headline just lately.)

No argument on the FAA part, but I think that suggestion was trying to be helpful. The father did not have a seat for his child -- they had not purchased a ticket for the 2 year old. His only choice was to put the child in his lap or buy a ticket on another flight (since their plane was full). While ill-advised and not in accordance with FAA policy, I took the FA's instruction as an attempt to help the man and his family keep their original flight, despite the fact that they frankly had no business on the plane.
The failure, as I see it, is that the family was permitted to board the plane without showing proper tickets/age verification in the first place.

 

[Soldier's*Sweeties]

I feel like this family was trying to cheat the system and then played victim. Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon now.

 

[cats mom]

It was pretty funny watching the reporter on the local news standing in front of the airport reporting on an incident that happened 2 weeks ago basically saying the family won't comment, Delta won't comment, and then getting reaction from several people who were clearly just commenting on the short YouTube clip.

I can't decide if this couple was clueless about non transferable tickets and no shows in the airline industry and really thought they could do whatever they wanted with that seat they had purchased, or if they knew but were hoping to pull a fast one and hope no one noticed.

We lucked out and the seat we had purchased for DD remained vacant when she had a last minute change of plans and couldn't fly with us recently, but only because that particular flight wasn't overbooked and the airline couldn't resell her seat. We knew going in that the airline would fill the seat we had already paid for if they could since DD was a no show.

 

[jliehr]

The gotcha in the latest story is the child's age. The confrontation was taped, and the FA's are telling the father to hold the child on his lap. However, the claim is that the child is 2 years old. 2 yo are too old to legally be lap babies, it's an FAA regulation that they must have a purchased seat.

Delta hewed to the contract of carriage, and the family did apparently try to use the adult son's BP for the 2 yo so as to use the paid-for seat (assuming that the teen did not fly standby on the same ticket to get home on the earlier flight), so there is some fault with the father's argument in terms of Delta's contractual obligation to him, BUT not only is it a PR cost, but if the FAA has video evidence of Delta FAs actually instructing a passenger to lap-carry a 2 year old child, the fine is going to be a whopper.

BTW, for what it's worth, Delta declined to send a representative to this week's Congressional hearing on Airline customer treatment. UAL, AA, and SWA did send representatives, as did Alaska Air. Delta was the only no-show out of the top 5 US domestic carriers. The hearing video is up on C-Span, it's 4 hours long, but just listening to the audio is really funny, because the Representatives were truly PO'd. The airline reps from UAL and AA were doing some serious wriggling to try to dodge their questions. (The reps from SWA and Alaska were a lot more forthcoming, but then, those airlines haven't had a nasty customer service headline just lately.)

They've confused people with the age thing

Family bought 4 seats

Seat A for Dad
Seat B for Mom
Seat C for 2 year old
Seat D for 18 year old who ended up flying a different flight

They also had a lap infant 1 year old

They decided to put the 18 year old on a different flight and wanted to let the 1 year old use the seat they had paid for that the 18 year old wasn't in. Delta saw that the passenger didn't board, and wanted to process a standby passenger into the seat.

The 2 year old thing is in articles, but if you watch the video it's clear they are saying the under two year old has to fly in the parents lap per the FAA. This is blatantly false, if the FA said that the 18 year old Mason isn't here and per our contract you agreed to when Mason didn't board the seat is no longer yours. Now you have two choices, put the kid on your lap or get off the plane.

Delta realized their representative handled it poorly and gave the family a refund and additional compensation.

 

[Albort]

BTW, for what it's worth, Delta declined to send a representative to this week's Congressional hearing on Airline customer treatment. UAL, AA, and SWA did send representatives, as did Alaska Air. Delta was the only no-show out of the top 5 US domestic carriers. The hearing video is up on C-Span, it's 4 hours long, but just listening to the audio is really funny, because the Representatives were truly PO'd. The airline reps from UAL and AA were doing some serious wriggling to try to dodge their questions. (The reps from SWA and Alaska were a lot more forthcoming, but then, those airlines haven't had a nasty customer service headline just lately.)

i loved when United got owned.

United: we need to overbook so we don't bankrupted
Southwest: We dont overbook anymore as of May.
Congress: Southwest, are u going into bankruptcy?
Southwest: Nope
United: ...