Alerts Sign-up
A video showing a Delta flight attendant threatening to have a passenger’s children taken away by the government has recently gone viral, amassing millions of views. However, this incident is not new; it originally occurred on April 23, 2017. The situation arose shortly after the widely publicized David Dao incident on United Airlines, heightening sensitivities around passenger treatment.
The family involved was traveling from Maui to Los Angeles on an oversold flight. Their older son had taken an earlier flight, and they intended to use his seat for their two-year-old child. However, since the older son did not show up for the scheduled flight, Delta reassigned his seat to a standby passenger.
Delta's stance was that the no-show status of the original passenger resulted in forfeiture of the seat. According to airline policies, if the family had checked in their older son and used his boarding pass for the younger child—who would not be ID-checked—they might have avoided the issue.
