Two blind women find themselves the only passengers on Southwest flight 'after staff FORGOT about them'

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Two blind women claim they found themselves to be the only passengers on a Southwest flight after they say staff 'forgot' about them.
Sherri Brun and Camille Tate, from Florida, were flying from New Orleans to Orlando on July 14 on Southwest Flight 2637 when their flight got delayed for nearly five hours.
The two blind women told FOX 35 that they were left sitting at a gate for hours before they boarded their flight, only to discover they were the only passengers aboard.
'You're the only two people on this flight because they forgot about you,' Brun said they were told.
The staff had allegedly rebooked everyone else without telling them, they told the local outlet. The airline disputes their 'inaccurate' account.
The friends said they patiently waited by their assigned gate - checking Southwest's app for updates but didn't hear of any changes.
'Nobody said a word to us about another flight,' Brun told the outlet. 'We were just waiting at the gate, checking the app, like everyone else.'
Now the pair are urging the airline to improve their communication with disabled passengers.
'There needs to be some improvement in how they communicate with their passengers, especially those that have disabilities,' Tate said.
But Southwest has denied 'forgetting' about the two women and claimed the pair remained booked on their original flight.
Despite apologizing for the inconvenience and offering a $100 stipend, the airline said there were no changes to the original flight and these are 'inaccurate accounts' of what occurred.
'We have seen inaccurate accounts that suggest we 'forgot' the two customers, or that we sent a plane back to get them,' a Southwest spokesperson wrote. 'Neither of these is the case.'
'The Customers were scheduled on Flight 2637. Although it ran almost five hours late that day, it remained their same flight number throughout.'
'We apologize for the inconvenience,' the airline said. 'Southwest is always looking for ways to improve our customers' travel experiences, and we're active in the airline industry in sharing best practices about how to best accommodate passengers with disabilities.'
In April, a blind teenager also slammed Southwest Airlines after a flight attendant shamed the college student publicly - before she was left stranded in an unfamiliar airport with no assistance following an excruciating 30 hours of travel.
Maddy Kolb, 19, was flying to Harford, Connecticut, from her hometown of Dallas, Texas, when she was left in tears due to what she says was a staff member's alleged 'hostility.'
Maddy, who takes an average of '12 to 14 Southwest flights a year,' was put on a flight which had a layover in Tampa, Florida - which she'd never stopped over in before.
'I am legally blind, I'm a white cane user, and I have meet and assist with Southwest,' Maddy recounted in a now-viral TikTok video. 'I have pre-board with Southwest, I have blind stamped on all of my boarding passes.'
Her plane had to disembark due to bad weather, with the airline rebooking the flights for everyone which resulted in Maddy spending six hours in the Tampa airport.
She was put on a flight to Hartford via Baltimore and was told by ground staff to let the flight attendants know that her next flight was leaving shortly after they landed so she could be taken straight there.
'[I was told] they were going to wait for me, due to my blindness... they were going to hold the plane for me,' she recounted.
When she boarded the plane, she said she was met with a flight attendant who told her she was 'not special,' and it 'doesn't matter that I had a flight to get to.'
'Basically that I'm not important and it didn't matter,' she said.