Posted on 05/05/2017 8:01:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Fill in the blank: “We are sorry for the unfortunate experience our customers had with …” This time it’s Delta Airline’s turn to apologize profusely for a viral video detailing their customer-service experience. Brian and Brittany Shear had paid for a seat used by their toddler on a flight from Hawaii back to California, where they live, when a flight attendant told them they had to give it up, claiming it was overbooked. When the Shears refused to do so, the video shows someone — it’s still unclear who — threatening them with jail and the loss of their children:
WATCH: Delta apologizes after kicking family off plane for refusing to give up their 2-year-old son's seat: https://t.co/WzSEY1z0F7 pic.twitter.com/PpYpCY2FEb
— Good Morning America (@GMA) May 5, 2017
On the video, Brian Schear can be heard talking with a person off-camera — it is not clear whether that person is a Delta employee, a security officer, or somebody else.
After Schear says that he won’t leave — the airline will have to remove him — the person off-camera replies, “You and your wife will be in jail … it’s a federal offense if you don’t abide” by an airline crew’s order.
“I bought that seat,” Schear protests.
Schear then suggests that his wife could hold one of the toddlers during takeoff and then put the youngster in the car seat. Another person, who appears to be a Delta supervisor, tells him that federal rules require that children under 2 must stay in a parent’s lap throughout the flight.
Er … about that …
That is false. The Federal Aviation Administration “strongly urges” that infants be in a car seat, although it permits those under 2 to be held in a parent’s lap. On its website, Delta recommends that parents buy a seat for children under 2 and put them in an approved child-safety seat.
Oopsie! However, there may have been another reason for Delta’s initial demand to have the toddler sit in the father’s lap. The Schears originally bought the seat for their 18-year-old son, but they bought him a separate ticket on an earlier flight in order to be able to use the seat for the toddler in his car seat — as Delta and the FAA recommend. It’s unclear whether the Schears updated the passenger information:
“I bought the seat,” Brian Schear is seen telling the agents in a video of the incident, explaining that he initially purchased the seat for his 18-year-old son but sent the teen home early on another flight so that the toddler would have a seat on the plane. “It’s a red-eye. He won’t sleep unless he’s in his car seat. So, otherwise, he’d be sitting in my wife’s lap, crawling all over the place, and it’s not safe.” …
The issue, it seems, is transferring airline tickets from one passenger to another. Delta Air Lines maintains on its website that “all tickets are nontransferable per the fare rules. Name changes are not permitted.”
Note, however, that is a Delta rule, not an FAA regulation. The FAA allows transfers as long as the names get changed early enough for a TSA check on the new passenger. Regardless, that alone could have been grounds to refuse service, but that’s clearly not the objection raised in this instance. If that was the problem, they would have asked them all to deplane right from the start, and shouldn’t have allowed them on the flight in the first place. Delta wanted the seat for another passenger, despite the fact that the Schears had paid for it, and then kicked them all off the flight for refusing to give it up — even after Brian Schear finally conceded the point and agreed to fly with his son in his lap.
Like American Airlines, Delta learned its lesson from United. When this video began to go viral on Wednesday, they immediately announced an investigation into the incident, then settled up with the Schears, complete with public apologies. It doesn’t matter if an airline can justify its behavior; when grossly poor customer service gets exposed, it’s much better and far less costly to simply apologize and offer a refund-plus to the customers involved. And threatening the loss of custody for parents who just want to fly home after a vacation is a pretty good example of “grossly poor customer service,” regardless of any justification.
After this string of viral videos, two things will happen. First, customers will become a lot more emboldened to stand up to airline employees, especially in overbooking situations, and second, airlines will have to try to eliminate those opportunities as fast as possible. This is a good demonstration of the marketplace at work. We may not need Congressional action on overbooking — airlines now have a strong interest in ending the practice. Markets being what they are, though, expect prices to rise to cover those sunk costs in empty seats, and expect cancellation fees and policies to get a lot tougher, which would have happened whether Congress drove these changes or not.
In a genuine unregulated market, passengers would have valid claims for bad faith against the airlines, e.g. conduct not consistent with the passengers reasonable expectations under the contract - to get to his final destination, safely, and without further expense and inconvenience.
It is long since past time that minimum regulatory standards were put in place requring:
1. Adequate leg room, seat space and chair comfort (I can go into any IKEA and find chair backs that are more comfortable than those put in roach class. Really, a piece of foam is a piece of foam - and there is no reason why they cannot be orthopedically conforming as opposed to some other shape).
2. Compensation for cancelled flights - e.g. hotel room, meals, and local transportation. When airlines can cancel flights willy-nilly and at not expense, then they cancel every flight that makes economic sense to cancel as opposed to the extra expense of planning resiliency into the system.
3. Overbooking and bouncing - common guys. Right now it's a rigged lottery with the airline as the bookie getting their action however badly the screw the customers.
Yes. But the passenger was a civilized guy. Hope he too gets a major payout.
Man they should just have taken the seat away from your kind and compensated him with at $200 voucher valid towards a fullfare ticket anywhere in the world in the next year [/scarcasm]
That is next...the video is the problem, not their service.
...not sure they’re the worst. Spirit Airlines and Air France are pretty bad. Spirit is like being in a chicken coup and Air France has some of the rudest attendants imaginable.
Apparently the check-in employee told them it was OK. Then the employee on the plane says that an under two-year old can’t be in a car seat during takeoff, which is totally not true. I think these employees need to be better trained and be tested on policies.
Why? They have the best employees Unions can buy!
Lol
Would I do that??!
Many foreign carriers are state owned, it would be a rather weird sort of irony...
In before the crowd here who thinks the Shears are criminals, that the 2 year should have been tazed,and the parents beaten with truncheons.
“Punching seat or Non Punchign seat?”
“Punching please- I need a good whippin”
“Thank you for flying United- have a nice... errrr um ... clot free flight”
Had a good one yesterday, Spirit put too much fuel on board an A319 for a flight from New Orleans to Atlanta and needed 9 “volunteers “ to deplane along with their checked luggage because we were too heavy to take off.
They offered to put them on another airline the same day and a round trip ticket on a future flight.
They had no problem getting the nine people, they got off cheap as far as I’m concerned.
Don’t see how 2500 pounds makes that much of a difference, the plane was about 75 percent full of people to begin with, they must have screwed up real bad and added enough fuel to get to LAX.
They have really sucked since the merger, used to make Platinum or Gold every year, now I can’t justify paying the higher fares (double or triple Spirit s rates)
I had a friend who would tell me what flights to take to get bumped - and 'win' cash or trips to Hawaii etc... Course back then you didn't go through security and often ran out onto the tarmac and up the stairs to get on a plane. Flying on planes traveling slower than jets that had plenty of leg room and stews offering free meals when trips were over 2 hours...
A nicer slower time... in so many ways.Our world has become courser, meaner and no where near as much fun.
No, tase the parents, beat the toddler. /S
This is ridiculous behavior, apparently so the airline could book an extra seat.
No, tase the parents, beat the toddler. /S
This is ridiculous behavior, apparently so the airline could book an extra seat.
He didn't buy a seat. He bought a contractual right to carriage.
After the Dao incident, the way the airlines are probably going to have to handle passengers like this guy or Dao is to make everyone get off the plane, and then let everyone else back on except for Dao or this guy or whoever they have ordered to leave the plane. A waste of everyone's time, but there you have it.
Any airline that continues to overbook flights is crazy. Don’t they know that people will simply fire up the video phones and refuse to get off, on camera. They will see dollar signs in the air.
The airlines are not going to win this battle and the ones who I feel bad for are the stewards/attendants who have to be the bad guys.
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