@Melizmatic@markfrauenfelder But let’s also have some empathy here, actually put ourselves into the shoes of that agent there… This issue was delaying their flight, which in turn delayed other flights, was probably a congestion for the air traffic controllers, other families might lost their connecting flights, and so on, and so on…
The choice of words wasn’t the best one, but this is somebody who was hired, just like us and many people, to do a (very stressful) job, they are also human, have families, they need to keep their jobs too. You can’t desantropomorphisize them as corporate drones just because they work with a big corporation, “passive-aggressive”, probably… who knows what many hours have they worked so far dealing with this kind of problems? They are people too. Stick it to the corporation if you want, but try to understand this work shifts/jobs too.
This family wasn’t following the rules and making it difficult for a lot of people, probably not a very good rule as stated by @markfrauenfelder above, but nonetheless the contract of carriage they choose to fly with.
Yeah, you’ve really impressed everyone with this winning entry in the “cite an anecdote which resembles the story at hand in no way whatsoever” contest that’s apparently on.
And that’s what’s most important isn’t it? That we all follow the rules? I mean, think of the harm to Delta if people pay for seats and fill them with the wrong kid. It would be chaos. Planes would fall from the skies and hellfire would burst forth from the bowels of hell.
What we need to do it take away their children, beat them mercilessly, and jail them for such heinous behavior. Right?
But none for the customers who get treated like pure-D crap on a regular basis by airline companies? Sure, why not? Corporations matter more than people, after all.
Understatement of the day.
Threatening someone’s kid when that’s not even within the limits of one’s actual authority is unacceptable, and I have no sympathy for the social backlash that flight attendant is about experience.
Any bets that the airline told them to move their kid, so they could squish another bum on seat, before checking the name of the kid against the ticket?
When the other kid didn’t show up at the gate, the seat was assigned to somebody else. It’s a case called a “no show”, happens in hotels, concerts and other places too.
It doesn’t matter who pay for what, the systems are agnostic of those matters. Just that the ticket holder didn’t show up. Probably it is stated clearly in the contract of carriage.
“In any event, the airline can’t “change” jack-shit, as this is a FAA security regulation.”
Wrong. There’s nothing in the FAA regs that says kids can’t sit in an unoccupied seat.
FAA CHAPTER 33 CABIN SAFETY AND FLIGHT ATTENDANT MANAGEMENT (3-3558): “Air carriers are encouraged to allow the use of an empty seat to accommodate a CRS [child restraint system].”
The family paid for the seat. They should be able to put their own child it it. The problem is that Delta oversold the flight and wanted to earn money twice for the same seat. Southwest has stopped overbooking and so should Delta. Do the right thing Delta.
At least Delta apologized and is making good. Imagine the PR disaster if you ran Delta lol.
Right and what is important is the booking system. That’s very important. We need to make sure we follow the proscribed methods at all times. No deviation from the norm can be tolerated. There is a system in place, it is agnostic of human concerns, and there is a contract of carriage we have to consider. We don’t want to break a contract do we? I mean, think of the chaos that child would have caused by sitting in a seat their sibling isn’t going to use.
And overbooking, gosh don’t we all love that concept? I know I do. Airlines need to overbook or they will collapse under the lost revenue. By overbooking, Delta was able to have more than one person pay for the same seat. These losers should just have given up immediately without ever questioning the flight attendant so that Delta can be free to increase their profits at the expense of actual people.
The airline has no excuse to not be able to account for the seating upon their planes. They could easily know how booked it is. But they choose to err on the side of maximized profits - for the simple reason that an overbooked plane will have no empty seats, compared to a fully booked flight which one or two people might miss or cancel.
So no, I feel no need to empathize with the airline’s policies being at the expense of their paying customers.
When they were interviewed on TV, they explained that using the seat for a different child had been discussed and approved by the airline before they went to the gate. It makes sense that the gate agent also knew about it during boarding.
But my biggest issue with this is the threat to take their children away and put them into foster care. Even with it being pretty unlikely that they could accomplish such a thing, That is the sort of threat one should never make.
Sure, but this particular seat was occupied - by another passenger once Delta properly resold it following the failure of the ticketed passenger (the 18 year old son who took an earlier flight) to check-in and present a boarding pass.
