Posted on 05/04/2017 6:16:50 AM PDT by Red Badger
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A Southern California family says they were kicked off an overbooked Delta airplane because they refused to yield a seat held by their young son.
The Schear family of Huntington Beach says they were flying from Hawaii to Los Angeles last week when airline staff asked them to give up a seat occupied by their 2-year-old son and carry him on their laps for the duration of the flight.
They tried to refuse and argued with airline staff, but say they were threatened with being sent to jail.
"You have to give up the seat or you're going to jail, your wife is going to jail and they'll take your kids from you," Brian Schear recalled the airline staff telling him.
Despite feeling they were in the right, that threat was terrifying, said Brian's wife, Brittany Schear.
"As a mother, you have a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old - it doesn't matter whether that's true or false. It put fear in me," she said.
They filmed the encounter with airport staff and posted it on YouTube.
VIDEO AT LINK.....................
When the 18 year old didn't show, the airline checked and found the toddler not on the parents lap....but in the seat vacated by the 18 year old. They were NOT entitled to use the 18 year olds seat. I'm inclined to say....clever?? or fraud because I'm sure the 18year old used the money from the vacated seat for the earlier flight.
At some point, the parents should have actually mentioned it to the attendant before boarding that the 18 year old wasn't coming.
They PAID for the seat - for their 18 yr old - who then changed plans and went on a different flight - but they kept the seat they'd paid for - for their 2 yr old.
and had him in a safety seat - per Delta's STATED rules for a child.... what part of that makes THEM wrong?
Were they even offered compensation if they gave up the seat they PAID for? (I hope they have the threats - if true_ of jail and loosing their kids - ... free flying foe the rest of their days-
Not Global Warming / Climate Change?................
So this is the ol’ “trying to change things once people have boarded” thing. Never good PR.
Whole lotta ‘boot lickers’ on this thread.
Delta dummies.
And why would we want to do that. How is this any different than any other kind of abuse done to the public by a company? From my perspective, this disgraceful incident was far worse than the dragging of the recalcitrant doctor off of the UAL plane. This guy and his family were not belligerent, and yet they were threatened with jail for simply trying to use what they had paid for. The airlines don't need any more regulation, they need to be sued each time they do something like this. But the truth of the matter is that the airlines, like most of our large businesses today, are run by a bunch of Harvard MBA’s ( or some reasonable facsimile from another equally detestable place) who have teen taught that the bottom line is the ONLY measure of their success.
The optics are bad on this one.
The passenger paid for the seat for an adult child, who took an earlier flight (I presume, by paying for a seat). The passenger then thought he could use the seat for another child, an infant, who originally was going to fly in his mother’s arms. The switch in seat assignments was apparently not communicated to the airline company.
The airline looked down its manifest and saw a no-show, pocketed the money paid for the no-show’s seat, and sold the seat a second time to another person.
Regardless of the fine print involved, the original passenger paid for the seat, and also did not communicate the switch of the seat to another person. And, the airline pocketed the original passenger’s payment for the seat, and then sold the seat a second time.
The 20-20 hindsight solution is that airline should have refunded the original passenger’s payment for the seat if it wanted to insist that he fly with the child in the lap.
Unstated is that the family was probably trying to game the system. SAY the infant was going to fly in the mother’s arms but quick look for an empty seat once the plane was airborne, hoping it wasn’t a full flight. Then, discovering that flights were filling up, sent the adult child on an earlier flight to “free up” a seat for the infant child they had originally hoped they would get for free.
Also unstated is that the economy is picking up, and people are showing up in greater numbers than the airline programs suppose (based on the soft economy of the prior several years).
What story did you read and what video did you watch? Reading and watching before posting something this stupendously stupid is hard, I know, but please put in the effort.
These are people who hold human life and well being in disdain and they are flying and messing with passengers and the planes.
When corporations abuse to this degree, they are begging for Federal regulations.
“The kids belong on your lap!!”
Can you not buy a seat for a 2-year old?
Regarding the overbooking aspect of this story, if people have to be kicked off, wouldn’t you think it wouldn’t involve a family with a 2-year old? On the other hand, the child could be in the lap of the parents.
Listen to the video. The child is under two. And the cry that I heard was not that of a one year old.
“The name on the ticket was for Mason, their 18-year old son who flew on a flight the day before.”
I didn’t see anywhere in the article where this was validated. It makes sense, although it is also not made clear, that the 18 year old went home early on another Delta flight, so why would not Delta completely understand what the family was doing and change the name on the ticket? Anyway, you don’t threaten people with jail for asserting their belief that what they did was with the airline’s approval.
I undestand the need for the aircraft personnel to be in complete control of the cabin when the plane is in flight, but it looks like the way they see it, once you board, it’s commie rules, even if the plane is at the gate.
Airline was correct. The person in the seat has to be the person on the ticket.
TSA and airline boarding agents should have caught that Grayson was going through security, NOT Mason. The photo ID of the 18 year old did not match the photo ID of the two year old (obviously). The family had to intentionally obfuscate the situation about the young passengers.
He did, to the agent at the gate before boarding the flight. That agent is the corporation..................
Solution - the customer is always right.
Fine, then hold the child until he needs to upchuck and point him in the direction of the usurper and let him sit in poopy diapers to sink up the area. Turn his kicking feet toward the usurper or toward the flight attendant when he/she/it walks past and constantly hit the call button again and again and again. Pinch his butt to send him into a fit of screams. Keep waking him up so no one sleeps on the flight. Ok, ok, don’t harm the child but make the entire flight miserable for everyone.
Something doesn’t add up about this.
And I drove 500 miles to not fly Delta, so I’m no Delta fan.
Weird dichotomy going on in our society. People are treated more and more like crap yet they are getting more and more entitled.
Aren’t you special.
The link says that airlines may require something like a copy of a birth certificate to confirm age and that parents should have such with them.
If a passenger is looking to switch to a new passenger name for a child traveling with them, it is reasonable for the airline to ask and maybe even confirm with documentation such child’s age.
That, as I said originally, is where IMO the airline should have caught this. And that would have been the time and place, if any, for them to disallow the parents giving a small child a seat against the regular policy.
They cannot get a name change because the ticket was already used! The ticket holder flew on another flight using that ticket. Unless they paid for a new ticket on the other flight that ticket was no longer valid. I am betting they did not tender the ticket when boarding. They tried using the invalid/used ticket to claim the seat. They may have been scamming Delta by having the older son change flights at the last minute so as to greatly increase the chances of his seat going unfilled and thereby keeping it open and allowing the father to use it.
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