Delta Apologizes After Crew Threatens Family With Jail for Not Giving Up Seats
The conflict erupted over a disagreement about a car seat…and escalated from there.
United isn't the only airline facing blowback for making the skies less than friendly. Delta Airlines has apologized to customer Brian Schear and his family after crew members threatened Shear and his wife with jail and their children with foster care if they didn't leave a flight due to a seating dispute.
The incident occurred on Delta Flight 2222 from Maui, Hawaii to Los Angeles, California, on April 23nd of this year, two weeks after United Airlines passenger David Dao was violently dragged off a flight in Chicago, igniting a media firestorm over airline policies regarding passenger treatment.
"They oversold the flight and asked us to give up a seat we purchased for my older son that my younger son was sitting in," Schear wrote in the description of the YouTube video, which was uploaded on Wednesday. "The end result was we were all kicked off the flight. They then filled our 4 seats with 4 customers that had tickets but no seats. They oversold the flight. When will this all stop?"
In the video, Schear is told by airline personnel that he has to remove his two-year-old child in a car seat from a seat he had purchased for his 18-year-old son. The two-year-old reportedly had an "infant in arms" ticket requiring him to be held by an adult. The airline worker tells Schear that if he did not remove the child from the car seat, the family would be kicked off the plane—and to disobey that directive would be "a federal offense."
"You and your wife will be in jail and your kids will be put in foster care," the crew member says.
"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," the statement read. "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."
You can watch the video of the entire incident below.
