Alaska Airlines employee uses her own credit card to get stranded Delta passenger home
When a stranded Delta passenger came to her for help, an Alaska Airlines flight attendant didn't just pay it forward, she pulled out her own credit card and paid out of her own pocket. Miriam Thomas was stranded in Ontario, California after the kind of nightmare flight scenario that stresses you out just to read about it. Thomas was trying to get home to Vancouver and immediately ran into issues with her ticket, which was issued without a seat assignment. She said that Delta employees told her just to hurry to the gate and that they'd find a seat for her once she got to the plane but – unfortunately – that never happened.
Thomas hustled her way through security, got to the gate and was told that her ticket had been cancelled — not the flight, just her ticket. Thomas told 1130 News:
I went back to the customer service desk and that’s when it started to get crazy. The Alaska Airlines people were trying to figure out why Delta had cancelled my flight, Delta was trying to figure out what had happened. I was just standing at the desk with my bags seriously hoping I can get on some flight that day.
After standing around, shifting her weight from foot to foot for a solid hour, Thomas said that she was told that the problem started with her nightmarish flight from Vancouver to California, which included mechanical issues, weather delays, an unscheduled stop in Portland and then an overnight stay in Seattle. Thomas – who was due in California for a work meeting – was put on a flight out of Sea-Tac the next morning, but that cost her, literally. Thomas said:
When they had the mechanical maintenance and we ended up in Seattle and had to spend the night in a hotel there, they used the rest of the value of my entire ticket on that rescheduled flight that morning so there was no more money for me to fly home. [Delta] didn’t tell me that.
After that hour of trying to get her situation sorted, an employee of Alaska Airlines (which partnered with Delta on the flight) took matters into her own hands, and out of her own bank account. The employee, named Judy, pulled her own credit card out and bought Thomas a flight back to Vancouver with her own money, telling her shocked coworkers that she was just paying it forward. Thomas said that Judy told her that she should "buy a stranger a coffee" when she got back. (Actually, it's more like she should buy a stranger a deluxe Keurig). Thomas told Canada's Global News
If I can help somebody who is stuck in a travel situation, I’d really love to help them somehow, I will be keeping an eye out.
Someone needs to keep an eye out for Judy. That's a woman who needs a high five and a sincere thank you.