First Ann Coulter, Now Clay Travis Has A Beef With Delta Air Lines
Ann Coulter’s dispute with Delta Air Lines over the loss of an extra-room seat prompted a tweetstorm yesterday, but prominent and controversial Fox Sports Radio host Clay Travis also encountered some turbulence of a different sort with Delta employees.
He has described it as a “messy” and “thoroughly indefensible” situation for which he deserves an apology.
Travis and his family were returning from a two-week European vacation this weekend. On Saturday, they were flying home from Paris where they would land in Minneapolis to meet a connecting flight to Nashville where they reside.
While waiting in line for the bathroom on the plane, Travis’ 6-year-old son began scratching his head. The flight attendants noticed he had head lice, which he apparently caught from his cousins prior to the trip. The parents had doused all three kids with over-the-counter lice treatments before they left, and no lice were noticeable during their time abroad.
Initially, the Travis family was quarantined on the plane after it landed, and the kids were examined by medical personnel. Delta employees subsequently told that the entire family that they needed to exit the airport immediately after clearing customs to be de-liced in the emergency room (which turned out to be a half-hour cab ride from the airport) before they would be permitted to board a Delta connecting flight.
As Travis tells the story, Delta required a medical certificate as a condition of the family’s continued travel.
So @Delta pulled my family off its planes on Saturday & refused to allow us to travel home. Read this: https://t.co/nmr3yv9vFl
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 17, 2017
The gate agent refused to allow Travis to talk to a supervisor or the pilot of the Minneapolis-to-Nashville flight. Remembering what happened to the doctor on the United flight in April, Travis decided against pressing the matter further.
His son’s head was reportedly examined an additional time in the customs area in front of hundreds of travelers.
It ended up that Clay Travis and his 2-year-old son flew home on Southwest that day, while his wife stayed behind with their 6-year-old and 9-year-old sons to address the lice issue. Delta did issue a hotel voucher.
According to Travis, everyone was checked out, and no one in the family other than the 6-year-old had head lice.
In a detailed chronicle of what happened on the Outkick the Coverage blog from his point of view, Travis insisted, among other things, that Delta has no lice policy in effect that would ban travel under these circumstances and that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control indicates that it’s no longer necessary to send school children home early if they are diagnosed with head lice.
With that in mind, “shouldn’t an airline let a kid complete his travel home with his family?” Travis wondered. He also questioned would happen, under similar facts, to a minor child traveling alone.
Clay Travis concluded his post with these thoughts.
“Look, I’m sympathetic to the fact that airlines and their employees have have tough jobs. And I understand the desire to protect passengers, but virtually every large plane in America today has a passenger with lice. It’s just that common…But I can’t help but think Delta totally mishandled this situation and needs to reconsider their policies…”
Read the Outkick blog and draw your own conclusions about a predicament that perhaps gives a new meaning to the saying, “itching to get home.”
Travis further discussed the Delta encounter on his NSFW Periscope broadcast, in which he also noted that airlines apparently routinely allow pets with fleas to fly.
Delta boots my family off flight, Game of Thrones debuts, Zeke Elliott in bar fight https://t.co/fCX0dg5TSO
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 17, 2017
A lawyer, Clay Travis separately describes himself as a radical moderate in terms of politics and had been vocal in his criticism of the leftward direction of ESPN in his view and the political correctness evident in the sports media. According to the New York Daily News, FS1 offered Travis a Los Angeles-based TV show along with a big salary on the condition that he abandon any further political commentary, including tweets. After mulling it over, Travis said no.
Delta Air Lines, through its Twitter feed or otherwise, has yet to comment or respond about what Clay Travis described. As the above is just one side of the story, watch this space for updates.
[Featured Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]
