US Airways Strands Wheelchair-bound Woman on Tarmac

Think your holiday airplane trip was bad? Listen to this one…

It ended up being a trip from hell for wheelchair-bound Jeanne Grettum of California this year.  She was on her way from CA to Orlando, Florida to visit her family, and during a stop in Las Vegas for a connecting flight, US Airways personnel wheeled her out onto the tarmac to catch her plane, but left her sitting there, alone, for 12 hours.

12 hours with no food, water, or jacket, until she was finally noticed by an airport employee and wheeled into a hallway - where she was again left alone for quite some time.  It wasn’t until 3 AM that she could get to a phone and let her daughter know what had happened.   

“She called me at 3 o’clock in the morning crying hysterical because she didn’t know what to do and no one would help her,” her daughter recalled in a television interview.

It took about six hours for the daughter to get the travel mess straightened out with US Airways and get her mother out to Florida.

And what did U.S. Air have to say for themselves? “We are not happy to hear about this incident,” U.S. Air said in a statement. “We will work with our employees because that’s not how we deal with our customers.”

We should hope not.

Grettum is happy that the ordeal is behind her, but is worried about her return trip back to California - because it’s booked on U.S. Air!

Let U.S. Air’s Customer Relations folks know this is unacceptable.

Read the news story on this incident.