Delta offers refund to family kicked off flight

LOS ANGELES — Delta Air Lines is offering refunds and compensation to a California family that says they were forced off a plane and threatened with jail after refusing to give up one of their seats on a crowded flight.

A video of the April 23 incident was uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday and added to the list of recent encounters on airlines that have gone viral, including the dragging of a passenger off a United Express plane.

Brian and Brittany Schear of Huntington Beach, California, told KABC-TV in Los Angeles that they were returning from Kahului Airport in Maui, Hawaii, with their two toddlers. They wanted to put one of the children in a seat they had bought for their 18-year-old son, who flew home on an earlier flight.

Delta says on its website that tickets cannot be transferred and name changes are not allowed. Federal regulations do not bar changing the name on a ticket as long as the new passenger’s name can be run through a database before the flight, according to a Transportation Security Administration spokesman.

A Delta spokesman said the flight was not overbooked.

On the video, Brian Schear can be heard talking with a person off-camera — it is not clear whether it’s a Delta employee, security officer, or somebody else. After Schear says that he won’t leave — the airline will have to remove him — the person off-camera replies: “You and your wife will be in jail … it’s a federal offence if you don’t abide” by an airline crew’s order.

“I bought that seat,” Schear protests.

Schear then suggests that his wife could hold one of the toddlers during takeoff, then put the youngster in the car seat. Another person, who appears to be a Delta supervisor, tells him federal rules require that children under two must stay in a parent’s lap throughout the flight.

That is false. The Federal Aviation Administration “strongly urges” that infants be in a car seat, although it permits those under two to be held in a parent’s lap. On its website, Delta recommends that parents buy a seat for children under two and put them in an approved child-safety seat.

The Atlanta-based airline issued a statement on Thursday. “We are sorry for the unfortunate experience our customers had with Delta,” the statement said. A spokesman said Delta would not disclose the amount of the refund or compensation.