The New York Post reports that a Manhattan lawyer is suing Delta Air Lines for one million dollars. He claims that their “absolute incompetence” ruined his elderly mother’s eightieth birthday celebration.
Richard Roth says that he’d arranged for his entire family, including several cousins, to meet in Argentina. Roth started planning the trip in September of 2007, and used frequent-flier miles to buy tickets on Delta for his family, including himself, his wife, his mother, and their two children on December 20th flying from Westchester to Atlanta and onward to Buenos Aires.
The party was delayed for two hours out of Westchester, with them unable to get any information on their connecting flight. Finally, by virtue of another family member on the Atlanta flight, were able to determine it too was delayed. Then, despite having boarding passes, and the plane still being at the gate, they were not permitted to board.
During this period, the Roths claim they were treated disrespectfully by Delta. Delta, of course, declined comment on any pending ligitation, as is expected. The family sprung for a night in a motel in Atlanta and were advised by Delta in the morning that they wouldn’t be able to get on a flight till January 8th, weeks later.
Roth called Aerolineas Argentinas and lined up a flight out of Miami, then they drove much of the way there. Delta, still in possession of their luggage, didn’t get it to them till Christmas Eve. Roth contacted Delta requesting reimbursement for the $21,000 on rental cars, clothes, hotels and airline tickets, but got no response, and thus is suing them.
Let’s review this. a Delta flight was delayed, causing passengers to miss a connecting flight. We accept, in theory, the connecting flight may have been closed, and thus could not be reopened for them, but not being offered alternate service for until three weeks later is not acceptable, even during the busy holiday season.
Delta’s Contract of Carriage(International version) states that, excepting force majeure events(we don’t know if this was one delaying the Westchester flight), Delta will transport the passenger on its next flight at no additional cost, or endorse the ticket to another carrier for purposes of rerouting, excepting if they hold first class tickets or wish to be rerouted on the Concorde(shows how recently they updated this).
Force Majeure events absolve Delta of all liability except a refund if they can attribute the problem to weather. That seems wrong. We can understand limited liability in the event of weather, but the airline should be required to get you where you paid to be in a timely fashion.
We are not being overly critical of Delta yet. They have not told their side of the story. But they dropped the ball somewhere when they failed to address Mr. Roth’s problem up to this point.