In this week’s version of bizarre news, Delta is requiring that a mother traveling with conjoined infant twins purchase two seats instead of one. As the Arizona Republic reports, Mandy Bailey spoke with Delta ticketing agents before departure and they couldn’t figure out how many seats to sell her. After a brief period of evil-doing and cat-stroking, Delta replied that since the kids would need two oxygen masks they need extra seats. Then they told Bailey (I’m not making this up) to “call the Red Cross” for help paying for the other ticket.
I suppose I can see the concern with not having enough oxygen masks for conjoined twins. But what do mono-infants sitting in their parents’ laps do when the oxygen masks drop? In that case there is still only going to be one mask falling from the ceiling: for the adult.
In the end, Delta is put in a hard place because they’re trying to cope with nonexistant standards on conjoined lap infants against the simple human problem of a mother getting her girls out to see family in Maryland. Despite the defensive stance that any corporate entity has to take in this day and age, in this case I think they’re being a little conservative with their policies.