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Delta apologizes after kicking family off flight

by Nikita Vladimirov - 05/05/17 11:36 AM ET

Delta Air Lines has offered an apology after forcing a family off an overbooked flight in April.

A video of the incident uploaded online this week depicts a California family being forced off a crowded plane after refusing to give up one of their seats on a crowded flight.

“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,” Delta said in a statement, as reported by KARE 11.

While Delta maintained that the company goal is to work with customers to resolve any potential travel issues, the airline noted that “that did not happen in this case and we apologize.”

{mosads}The airline personnel attempted to explain that one of the young children in the family cannot be in a separate seat, and asked the family to give the spot up for another passenger.

“He has to sit here in your arms the whole time,” one employee says to the family in the video. “Technically, he couldn’t even be on a seat.”

According to the report, however, the Federal Aviation Administration “strongly urges” that infants be in a car seat while on an airplane.

In the video, the father Brian Schear explained that his two-year-old child was occupying the seat that was originally purchased for his teenage son, Mason.

The father told the airline that he got Mason a separate flight on another plane after deciding that his two-year-old should have a separate seat.

“We decided to get him a ticket on an earlier flight so we could use his seat and put a car seat to let the kid sleep because it’s a redeye,” Schear explained in the video.

According to the report, the family was also told by the airline that they could not have the two-year-old occupy a seat that is under another person’s name.

The Delta incident is the latest in a series of customer service complaints with multiple airlines and comes just weeks after a United passenger was dragged off an airplane in order to make room for crew members.

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