It’s a traveler’s nightmare — all you want is to get home, but the airplane gods keep throwing obstacles in your way that make it seem hopeless that you’ll ever return from your Odyssean travels. One Atlanta mom was on a mission to get home in time to pick up her daughter from camp, and finally managed to finish her journey thanks to Delta CEO Richard Anderson. 

CNN says the woman had been coming from New York but was then rerouted to Washington. After waiting for hours there and led down the gateway, she was at first told there were seats available after all.

Then events started to go her way, as she was waived onto the plane and something unusual happened: a man in a collared shirt and tie put her luggage in an overhead bin and pointed her to her seat. She assumed it was an off-duty pilot. Nope.

She chronicled her story in an open letter to Anderson on Facebook, writing:

“As the plane descended into Atlanta, the flight attendant announced that there was a special guest on board. He was riding in a jump seat, because he had given up his place to allow one more person on that flight. That special guest was you: Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta.”

She adds in her letter that the reason she was trying so hard to get home in time to pick up her daughter from camp is partly because her daughter has Type 1 diabetes.

Someone else could’ve fetched her, but “pick-up day gives me a glimpse into that special world where she’s just like everyone else, she’s a little bit of a different person for the rest of the day,” she wrote. “By the next day, it’s back to the harsh realities of managing a difficult, deadly, incurable disease that kills 1 in 20 before the age of 18.”

Delta CEO gives up airplane seat to mom [CNN]

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