Hi Everyone,
I want to give you an update on our efforts to address a negative experience a Marine had on a recent Delta flight and our efforts in response to this incident.
We have made several attempts to talk with this customer directly. We have yet to be able to reach him, but I have left my personal cell phone number with people who have agreed to pass it along to our customer. If given the opportunity, I’d like to personally apologize and attempt to make up for this experience.
When we learned of this event we immediately began a thorough review of what happened and how it happened. We found that in our haste to accommodate his request for an earlier flight than originally booked – one that was already being boarded when he arrived at the gate – we clearly missed opportunities to better serve him.
At Delta, we feel a deep obligation to support our nation’s servicemen and servicewomen who fly with us daily, and we will continue to do what we can to make this right.
We’re sorry for this service hero’s experience. And we are using this unfortunate and unacceptable incident as an opportunity to revisit and reinforce the standards that our more than 80,000 employees worldwide embody.
Thank you again for your concern,
Allison Ausband, vice president – Customer Care
December 19th, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Unacceptable.
Providing a second party with your personal phone number with the hopes that it is passed to Lance corporal Brown is not the answer. There are far too many eyewitness accounts of the events not to make a judgment call one way or the other, and it seems to me that Delta already acknowledges that.
Let me ask you a question, had the customer’s name been Lance corporal Christian Ausband, the double amputee war veteran, what would be acceptable to you as his mother or sister? I hope you will never feel the pain his family has endured, that is not my point, I only wish for you to see how silly your response and the response of Delta is.
Had I been treated in such a way, I probably would not want to talk with you or anyone else from Delta airlines either. What I do know is how I feel now, and that is a feeling of shame, anger, and helplessness. I feel shame knowing that another American can treat a true hero in such a manner, anger that a true hero was, and helplessness at being able to do anything about it, except this.
Please cancel my frequent flyer account with Delta airlines, if I ever fly on a Delta plane it will be a long time from now. If the frequent flyer miles I have accumulated to date can be of value to anyone else, please feel free to give away. I will also be contacting American Express and informing them to either remove the Delta connection, or if that cannot be accomplished to close the account.
Best wishes,
Steve
December 27th, 2012 at 7:49 am
I would like to know what the flight crew has to say for themselves. Some of them surely dropped the ball big time. Comments from Delta on this incident so far are just not cutting it.
January 10th, 2013 at 10:11 pm
If Delta were truly sorry for the way it has treated this hero the writer above, Allison Ausband would NOT have tried to water the situation down by trying to make Delta out as some sort of great company because they granted his request to board an earlier flight. Irrelevant to the way these PUKE flight attendants treated him. I have no doubt that the flight attendants are acquainted with the term FLIGHT HAG. sounds like the moniker is very appropriate. Delta needs to have these disgusting women or whatever a career male flight attendant is called make personal contact with this Marine, they need a minimum of 4 months off without pay and lose any seniority they may have accrued during their pathetic lives. The co-pilot is a total pansy and sure took the easy way out referring the irate passenger to customer service. Flight Hags have been taught good customer service habits. I suspect these are the type of disgusting women that get a kick by putting Visine drops into the drinks of passengers they don’t like. I could tell you more stories about what PUKES like this do on purpose to make themselves feel like they are above the rest of the world. Nasty group of people.
February 1st, 2013 at 6:44 pm
“At Delta, we feel a deep obligation to support our nation’s servicemen and servicewomen who fly with us daily, and we will continue to do what we can to make this right.” Really? As I indicated earlier, how come Delta is the ONLY major US airline that DOES NOT allow uniformed military personnel to fly same-day stand-by???
March 7th, 2013 at 7:19 am
Just in case you needed an example of how to do the right thing…
United Airlines delays flight for man to see dying mother.
(CNN) — If Kerry Drake missed his connecting flight, he wouldn’t get to the hospital in time to say goodbye to his mother.
Drake got the news on the morning of January 24 that his mother, who had been ill for years from rheumatoid arthritis and had been especially sick the last four months, was dying.
To get to his mother in Lubbock, Texas, the San Francisco resident booked a United Airlines flight, with only 40 minutes between connecting flights in Houston. When his first flight was delayed, Drake thought he would miss his connecting flight to Lubbock, the last one of the day.
Sometimes, airlines go the extra mile
He started crying, obviously distraught. The flight attendants brought napkins for his tears, said they would do what they could to help, and most importantly, got his connecting flight information to the captain, he told CNN.
When he got off the airport train and was running toward the gate, “I was still like maybe 20 yards away when I heard the gate agent say, ‘Mr. Drake, we’ve been expecting you,’” he said.
The captain had radioed ahead
With the information from the flight attendants, the captain had radioed ahead about Drake’s situation, and the Lubbock crew had delayed departure to get him on board.
Until that point, Drake had been rushing on adrenaline to make the flight. Finally sitting on that second airplane, he realized how much had gone into helping him get on that plane. “I was overcome with emotion,” he said.
Even his luggage arrived on time. The Houston ground crew made sure of it.
He made it to the hospital in time to see his mother. “At one point she opened her eyes, and I think she recognized me,” said Drake, who spent the night at the hospital. “Around 4 a.m. she had a real moment of coherence, a last rally, although we didn’t know it at the time. It was the last time.”
She died that morning.
Employees working together
Drake wrote to United Airlines upon his return to ensure that the flight attendants, pilots, gate agents and baggage handlers who helped him that day were thanked for their service. His story made it into an employee newsletter as an example of what employees could do. “Our employees really worked together that day to help this customer,” said United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy.
“This almost never happens,” wrote Christopher Elliott, who first told Drake’s story on his airline consumer advocate website, via e-mail. “Airline employees are evaluated based on their ability to keep a schedule. Airlines compete with each other on who has the best on-time departure record.”
Pilot holds flight for man going to see dying grandson
“When the crew on this flight heard about this distraught passenger trying to make his connection, they must have said, ‘To hell with it,’” wrote Elliott, who’s also the reader advocate for National Geographic Traveler. “And they made the right call.”