Airline swoops in to help group of students stranded in Oklahoma City due to bad weather
A major airline stepped in and saved the day when some fifth graders became stranded at the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City when storms caused their flight to be cancelled.
A group of 41 excited Oklahoma City fifth graders and their chaperones preparing to jet off to Richmond, Virginia, and the nation’s capital ran into an unfortunate snag in their travel plans earlier this month: the connecting flight to Dallas was suddenly canceled due to bad weather conditions.
The young students and their supervisors from James L. Dennis Elementary School were planning to head to the East Coast at 5 a.m., local time, on June 2 for a school field trip when American Airlines announced the cancellation of their scheduled flight.
“The flight affected by weather could have been an incoming flight from another part of the country and have nothing to do with the weather between Oklahoma City and Richmond,” said AccuWeather Meteorologist Tony Zartman. “Meanwhile, the weather was fine at the departing and arriving cities.”
That appeared to be the case with the group’s previously scheduled flight, as an American Airlines spokesperson told AccuWeather that the canceled flight had been unable to depart Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) to fly into Oklahoma City the night before due to “the weather in the region.”
Inclement weather conditions “out of our control” led to the cancellation of more than 300 American Airlines flights that weekend, including other flights to and from DFW, the spokesperson said, offering an apology for the unexpected cancellation on behalf of the airline.
It looked like the start of their school trip from Will Rogers World Airport was now hanging in the balance, since there were no other American Airlines planes scheduled to fly that day that could accommodate them all. However, all was not lost for the elementary students, as Delta Air Lines representatives in the airport heard about their bad luck and were able to swoop in and save the day.
“We reached out to our Operations and Customer Center (OCC), because there were not 41 open seats on our flights that day, and it would’ve involved spreading the students out across a number of flights,” Drake Castañeda, corporate communications spokesperson for Delta Air Lines, told AccuWeather. “They were happy to help, because it was not an ideal situation.”
The operations team quickly worked to find a spare aircraft that could accommodate all passengers. “It didn’t really matter if they were booked with us or not,” Castañeda said. “They were going to do all they could to make sure they could get them [to Richmond]. It was great that we were able to find an aircraft and crew that was able to do that at a moment’s notice.”
The operations center had to obtain special permission in order to fly the students directly from Oklahoma City to Richmond, because Delta does not operate a direct route between these locations.
The 76-seat charter flight had to fly 2.5 hours from the Delta hub in Atlanta to pick up the students in Oklahoma City. Around 3 a.m. on June 2, the plane arrived and was ready to carry the students directly to their destination — with the entire plane all to themselves.
Chaperone Shantell Barbour expressed her gratitude to Delta on Twitter following their safe arrival in Richmond, posting a photo of some of the smiling students who were ready to start their educational excursion.
“This heartwarming story is a testament to our culture and the heart of Delta people that if you see an opportunity to do right thing, you take it every time,” Delta said in a statement. “Seeing people for who they are, and not just customers of one carrier or another is what really made this story possible.”
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