Delta pilot turns plane around to get family to funeral

– A random act of kindness was extended to a Phoenix family that almost missed their flight to Tennessee – which would have meant missing their father’s funeral.

“After a long ordeal to get everything taken care of, he (Jay) was finally on a flight Saturday morning and the funeral was scheduled Sunday”, Short’s wife, Marcia, said. However, the first leg of their flight – from Phoenix to Minneapolis-St.

The Short family had experienced a 90-minute flight delay from Phoenix to Minneapolis, which left them with 10 minutes to make their connecting flight to Memphis.

A member of the ground crew said there was nothing that could be done to stop the flight and the family watched in despair as the plane began to taxi towards the runway.

And it was the very last leaving the city that day.

“These pilots did not have to pull back to the gate”, Marcia said.

Marcia Short’s husband of 32 years wished to be buried by his family in Tennessee.

In the week before Christmas, one Delta Air Lines pilot gave a grieving Arizona family a “gift that no one else could”, Tucson News Now reports.

“Thank you from the bottom of our hearts and may you both be blessed ten fold, ‘ Nicole wrote, asking people to share her post to get some recognition for the ‘amazing pilots”. We’ve just got something in our eye.

The family was told they would be put on a flight to Atlanta and then they could drive from Atlanta to the funeral in Bolivar, Tennessee. If they didn’t make the flight, they would miss the funeral.

However, the group’s misery turn to joy when the phone rang and a mesasge was relayed to the family that the plane would be retuning to collect them. He saw the tears, the sadness, the desperation on their faces and when he was told the family was on their way to their father’s funeral, the pilot did something unprecedented.