Special delivery! Passengers on a Delta Air Lines flight had to wait a while after their flight was diverted but the airline tried to make it up to them with a free pizza delivery.
A flight from Boston to Atlanta was diverted to Knoxville due to tornado warnings in Georgia. To make up for the wait, Delta provided free pizza to the passengers on board.
Ryan Wood, a passenger, told WRCV TV that the plane circled for a while before landing in Knoxville due to low fuel. When he looked out the window upon landing, he was surprised when he was a cop car pull up to the plane.
"And, I see a cop car pull up and I'm like, 'this is going to be good, what's going on here?' Then I see a cop get out and a couple guys helping him with about 30 pizzas out of the back seat and I'm like, 'oh alright we got some pizza... we're going to have a little pizza party on the plane,'" he told the station.
The passenger were provided with 60 pies on board. The Delta station manager at Knoxville ordered the pizzas for the passengers after the plane had been stranded for about three hours.
"He called the pizza place and said I need 60 pizzas as soon as possible and brought them in," Michele Carson-Vaughn, Delta's director of field services for the Southeast told the station. The manager was not identified. Delta worked with the TSA to get the pizza delivery to the plane.
WXIA reports that Delta ordered pizzas for passengers who were stranded in Savannah as they waited for better weather in Atlanta. Delta ordered 160 pies in that incident.
According to federal law, airlines must let passengers off of a plane if it has been on the tarmac for three hours. After two hours, the airline must provide passengers with water and snacks but a snack could be something as small as a bag of chips.
"Of course we were all upset, but everyone was pretty accepting," passenger Jen Vazmina told NBCnews.com about the delay. "The pilot kept the mood light and the flight attendants busted their butts to keep us hydrated."
After the three hour mark, the captain told passengers that they could get off the plane, but according to Vazmina, "but no one left or for that matter cared anymore."
Pizza delivery is "a nice thing we can do for our customers. And it's something we've been doing in these situations," Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant told NBC.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
