A bereaved daughter has shared a touching story about how Delta Air Lines helped her say her final goodbyes to her dying mother.
Hannah White reported in a now-viral TikTok — which has garnered 10.3 million views and 1.9 million likes — that the carrier made it possible for her to see her mom just one day before she passed.
Her mom, Kathleen Nelson, was in the hospital for undiagnosed pneumonia and was “doing well” after surgery, she wrote on the video.
But then she got a call from her brother informing her that her mother’s body had gone into septic shock and “family needed to visit her immediately.”
“Doctors did not know what was wrong or how long she had,” White said.
She immediately booked the first flight out of Dallas the following day, which had a connection in Minneapolis, to get to Bismarck Municipal Airport in North Dakota.
The timing of the connecting flight would have been fine, but the plane from Dallas had mechanical issues and they sat on the plane at Dallas Fort Worth airport for over an hour, she explained.
“I knew if I didn’t make my connecting flight I wouldn’t see my mom until the following day and we weren’t sure she’d be alive,” White shared.
White explained the situation to a flight attendant and asked if there was anything that she could do to make sure she got on the connecting flight to see her mother.
Flight attendant Eva Ortiz, CNN reported, returned to White’s seat and told her that unfortunately, she was going to miss the second flight and that the airline had already booked her on a new flight for the following day.
“As she explained this, I immediately started welling up with tears,” White said. “She apologized and cried with me.”
“I balled up in my seat, knowing there was a possibility I wouldn’t be able to see my mom one last time.”
But Delta didn’t let her down.
An hour later, Ortiz returned to White’s seat and told her that the pilot, Captain Keith Napolitano, called the other pilot on the connecting flight and explained her story.
The other pilot agreed to hold the plane and wait for her so she would get to see her mom.
“The stars don’t always align where I have the immediate ability to affect the outcome, but this was one of those cases where I felt it was possible,” Napolitano told CNN Travel.
White said that they bumped her to first class on the first flight so she would be able to get off the plane faster.
“When I got to my first class seat, the pilot made an announcement to the whole plane to let me off first so I could make it to say goodbye to my mom,” she wrote.
She shared that the passengers helped her out as well. The man sitting next to her in first class realized that the pilot was talking about her, so he pulled up a map of the airport and helped her figure out where the connecting gate would be.
“He told me to run as fast as I could as soon as we land,” she said.
She got off the plane and ran to the second flight, knowing the plane had been waiting 30 minutes for her.
“The whole time I was picturing my mom and how she would run across the country for me, too,” White shared.
When she got to the flight, the entire plane was seated and waiting, and she knew she’d be able to relax knowing she’d get to see her mom that night.
“I made it to my flight and all the staff happily welcomed me saying, ‘We’ve been waiting for you, Hannah,’” she added.
“As I got off, all the flight attendants gave me encouraging words and wished me luck,” White said, adding that the pilot shook her hand and told her he would pray for her.
White’s mom passed away the next day, and thanks to Delta she got an extra 24 hours with her.
“I was able to say ‘I love you’ one last time and provide the comfort for her in her final moments that she provided for me my whole life.”
“Thank you, Delta. You gave me the gift of time. You have a forever customer in me,” White concluded.
