Delta has canceled its “International Media Day” in the wake of a viral video that showed one of its employees threatening a California dad with jail time and kicking him and his family off a flight, the airline said on its website.
The nixed three-day event in New York City will be rescheduled later this year.
“With the recent focus by Congress on airline customer service issues that have gone viral on social media, we decided that the timing is not right to showcase Delta’s product innovations and global strategy,” Delta said in a statement.
Last week, in the latest p.r. black eye for the airline, dad Brian Schear uploaded a YouTube video of a Delta employee telling him that he and his wife would be tossed behind bars — and his family booted off the flight — for refusing to give up a seat that they paid for.
The employee wanted to give the extra seat Schear originally purchased for his son — who caught an earlier flight home from Hawaii — to a standby passenger on April 23.
The Schears ultimately were removed from the flight.
Delta later issued an apology and offered to refund the family, as well as provide “additional compensation.”
Meanwhile, a Delta pilot was suspended for a week for hitting a female passenger while intervening in a fight at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport on April 21.
“Media days” commonly are held by airlines as a way for them to announce upcoming initiatives and let top executives field questions from reporters, USA Today reported.