"Family shaken by woman's Las Vegas airport experience"

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Family shaken by woman's airport experience
Airline denies claim it left 60-year-old on tarmac
BY JAMES GELUSO
The Bakersfield (CA) Californian


A 60-year-old Mountain Mesa woman's flight from Bakersfield to Orlando,
Fla., took an unexpectedly long stop in Las Vegas that included sitting
outside on the tarmac for almost a half hour while an employee searched for
someone who could take her inside.

Jeanne Grettum was stranded on the tarmac near midnight for about 20 minutes
because no skycap came to escort her, and then had to rely on the kindness
of strangers just to get around the airport, said her daughter, Tammy
Nielson.

Grettum flew from Bakersfield to Las Vegas on Dec. 23, where she was
supposed to catch a connecting flight to Orlando to see her granddaughter
for the first time. But the flight from Bakersfield was late.

And despite instructions to the airline that Grettum would need assistance
getting around the airport, no skycap was at the plane to take her inside.
Instead, a tarmac employee wheeled her from the plane to near the building,
then looked around for someone to take her inside, according to Nielson.
Finding no one, the employee finally wheeled her into a hallway.

US Airways has denied the allegations, claiming that an employee with
Prospect, a contractor, arrived to bring Grettum inside, according to a
timeline the airline provided to Channel 8 in Las Vegas and posted on the
station's site at www.LasVegasNow.com.

That hasn't stopped the story from snowballing across the Internet, with
some sites putting a new spin on it. According to some sites, Grettum was
left on the tarmac for three hours, and one site inflated the wait to 12
hours.

That's not the story Nielson told The Californian. She says Grettum arrived
in Orlando 12 hours late, after being put up in a hotel in Las Vegas by the
airline along with other passengers stranded in the airport.

The plane arrived in Las Vegas about 11:30 p.m., according to Nielson, and
at 11:40 p.m. according to US Airways. It was at 11:56 p.m. Pacific Time
that Grettum, having been wheeled inside and left alone in a hallway, called
her daughter in Orlando, where it was 2:56 a.m. Eastern Time.

Still, Nielson said she was most angry about the treatment her mother
received from the gate agent in Las Vegas, who told Grettum to get herself
to the service counter for rebooking. 

Grettum has osteoporosis, high blood pressure and must take pain pills just
to walk, she said.

"She can walk short distances, but she can't walk the whole terminal," she
said.

It was only through the kindness of another couple that Grettum was able to
make it to the other counter.

Nielson said her mother -- who works part time as a home care aide in
Mountain Mesa, a community near Lake Isabella -- requires a stepstool just
to get into a vehicle that isn't very low.

Nielson said it took two days to escort her mother back to Bakersfield, and
she missed precious days with her own son, who was on leave from the
military. During that flight, she ran into the couple who'd helped her mom,
who promised to act as witnesses. But she declined to give out their names,
saying she would share that only with her legal representative.

Nielson also had to spend four hours with her mother in an emergency room,
she said, because her mother's lungs were filling with fluid -- a condition
Nielson suspects has to do with the cold and the stress of her stop in Las
Vegas.

US Airways employees in Orlando treated her mother well, and so did the
hotel employees, Nielson said.

"They were wonderful, it was just Vegas who screwed up," she said.

Grettum flew back to Bakersfield on Friday and is now safe at home, her
daughter said. Nielson had called a TV station in Florida because she was so
upset about what happened to her mother, but she said she didn't expect the
story to grow the way it did. Now her mother is embarrassed by all the
attention.

"My mother is a very quiet, private person," Nielson said. "She doesn't know
how to handle all these people knowing what happened to her."


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