'You should have bought insurance': Spirit Airlines boss has no sympathy for dying Vietnam vet denied a refund
The boss of Spirit Airlines has stuck by the company's harsh no-refund policy, claiming a dying Vietnam veteran who was refused his $197 back should have bought insurance.
Chief executive Ben Baldanza also shrugged off the fact the carrier generates two-and-a-half times more complaints from passengers than America's next most unloved carrier, telling Fox News such statistics are 'irrelevant'.
Spirit tallied 8.27 complaints per 100,000 passengers in January, while United finished a distant second-worst, clocking 3.5 complaints per 100,000 fliers, U.S. Department of Transportation statistics show.
Change of heart: Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza, pictured, has reversed a previous denial to a dying Vietnam veteran for a refund because he didn't buy insurance
Meanwhile, Southwest notched just 0.2 complaints per 100,000 passengers.
Even more customers have been racing to pour scorn on the heartless airline since it denied a $197 refund to 76-year-old Jerry Meekins, who learned he couldn't take the flight he had booked because his esophageal cancer was terminal and prevented him traveling.
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More than 21,000 people now 'like' a 'Boycott Spirit Airlines' Facebook page since Spirit officials told Meekins, of St Petersburg, Florida, to forget getting his money back.
This has increased from just 700 before the treatment of Meekins went public.
Stand: Spirit Airlines previously wouldn't return the money because they have a no-refund policy and they can't bend the rules for one customer (file photo)
'A lot of our customers buy that insurance and what Mr Meekins asked us to do was essentially give him the benefit of that insurance when he didn’t purchase the insurance,' Baldanza told Fox News.
'Had we done that, I think it really would’ve been cheating all the people who actually bought the insurance … and I think that’s fundamentally unfair.'
The CEO likened the situation to a homeowner with no insurance expecting to get paid out when his house burns down.
'We feel very badly for Mr Meekins, however, this is a country and society where we kind of play by the rules,' he said. 'And he wanted to really not do that and that’s really not fair to the 10 million other Spirit customers and that’s why we made that decision.'
Apology: Former Marine Jerry Meekins who's terminally ill with cancer, received an apology from the CEO today and a $5,000 donation to a charity of his choice
Outrage: Before the CEO's apology, nearly 39,000 collected on Facebook to boycott the airline
As for the industry-leading rate of complaints, Baldanza said he's not losing sleep over it.
'If you ran a restaurant, and out of every 100,000 customers, 8 of them said they didn’t like your menu, would you change your restaurant?' he asked. 'Why don’t we interpret that 99.92 of all customers have no complaints? Because that is what it says.'
Baldanza is not known for his customer service. In 2007, he laid bare his feelings about his passengers in an email which he meant to send to a colleague, but accidentally hit reply all, sending it out to the very passenger who had complained.
'Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned,' the email read. 'Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown before with us anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.'
Meekins had purchased the plane ticket to see his daughter in New Jersey. When he was advised not to take the trip because of his condition, he offered the airline proof that he was ill.
He told TBO.com: 'I offered them all of the confirmation from my oncologist, from hospice, even my pre-paid funeral package. They didn't want to look at any of it or hear about it.'
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