Delta Air Lines Check-in Was Halted At London Heathrow As Agents Threatened To Seize Plane Over $3,400 Debt
A U.K. series Call The Bailiffs: Time To Pay Up, which debuted in summer 2021 on Britain’s Channel 5, aired footage of Delta Air Lines check-in at London Heathrow being shut down prior to a flight to New York JFK.
Bailiffs sought to collect a $3,400 refund that had been owed to a passenger for a couple of years. The customer had obtained a court writ, and the agents are empowered to seize a company’s property to satisfy the debt. They can seize planes. They’re shown planning to halt check-in and ground aircraft unless Delta paid.
Once agents were inside the terminal, check-in staff call their manager, and they had a dispute over whether the check-in desks could be closed. As one agent put it, “it may seem slightly disproportionate when you’re perhaps using a 50 million pound asset for a debt that’s maybe only a few thousand pounds.”
They closed check-in, passengers were turning up and the airline’s queues got longer. So a Delta manager pulled out their personal credit card. The ordeal took “over an hour” but collections were made.
This all occurred at London Heathrow terminal 2, and Delta currently operates out of terminal 3. That, and the prevalence of masking, tells me that this was filmed during the pandemic. Terminal 3 had been closed temporarily and operations were consolidated in other terminals, but Delta (and Virgin Atlantic) returned to terminal 3 in July 2021.
I’ve written about passengers hiring private bailiffs to collect on unpaid flight delay compensation, taking credit cards from airline staff in their offices to avoid seizure and sale of the office furniture.
Bailiffs once showed up at London Luton airport, delaying a Wizz Air flight to collect a refund that was owed to a customer. It caused a flight delay, and then Wizz Air owed EU261 compensation to all of the passengers on board!
Former Slovenian Star Alliance member Adria Airways once even cancelled a flight to Vienna because they expected bailiffs to seize their aircraft over an unpaid 250 euro claim. Weird, because everyone on the cancelled flight would have been owed compensation, too.
(HT: Travel Zork)