At the end of a nightmare day of airline delays, Jessie Frank, who was in route to join her 12-year-old daughter for the girl’s last day of diabetes camp, received a last-minute reprieve on an overbooked flight thanks to a caring CEO.
“I was 8th on the standby list, showing 0 seats left. I was about to give up, but the counter agent stopped me from leaving.”
Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson had given up his seat in the cabin so Frank would able to catch the last flight to Atlanta. The Delta staff was not even aware of the mother’s desperate wish to see her daughter shining at a camp where all the kids were just like her.
“Camp Kudzu gives my daughter 5 days a year when she feels ‘normal’,” Frank wrote on her Facebook page in an open letter of thanks to the airline executive. “Pick-up day gives me a glimpse into that special world where she’s just like everyone else.”
In the letter, Ms. Frank also praised the actions of “at least a dozen” counter agents and ticketing crew members at Delta.
“Without exception, they were all calm, kind, diligent, funny… and really went out of their way to try to help me. All this, while at the same time facing a firestorm of angry passengers because there had been so many disrupted flights.”
(Here’s a photo of the Delta CEO)