LOS ANGELES — Delta Airlines kicked a young family off a flight and threatened them with jail if they didn’t comply.
Video filmed on April 23 aboard Delta Airlines flight 2222 from Hawaii to Los Angeles was posted to YouTube on Wednesday by dad Brian Schear from Huntington Beach, California.
Schear’s wife Brittany started filming when airline staff asked the family to give up a seat they had paid for to make space for another passenger.
The couple was traveling with two toddlers and the seat was occupied by their 2-year-old son.
For safety reasons, the Schears planned to strap the boy into a car seat placed on top of it but the airline insisted Brian hold him in his lap.
To make matters worse, airline staff said the child could not occupy a seat during the flight because it was against Federal Aviation Administration rules.
Which is untrue. The FAA recommends that toddlers sit in government-approved car seats for safety purposes — and so does Delta’s own website.
The issue that Delta used to trip the family up in the end was that the seat was originally booked in the name of Brian’s 18-year-old son, the Washington Post reported.
But the teen flew back on an earlier flight so his brother would have a seat. The thinking being that otherwise the kid would not sleep on the 5-hour-long red-eye, and it would compromise safety with him crawling all over his parents’ laps.
But technically tickets on Delta flights are non-transferable.
Eventually the family accepted they couldn’t win and asked if they could give up the seat and get in the air.
Instead, Delta threatened the family with jail if they didn’t all get off the flight.
They were told that having nowhere to stay was not Delta’s problem and they were on their own.
So at around midnight the Schears had to scramble around for a hotel. They then spent $2,000 on a new flight leaving the next day, according to ABC affiliate KABC.
Delta apologized on Thursday and said they’d contacted the family to offer them a refund and additional compensation.
