A mom from Jacksonville, Florida, who found herself in an unexpected and taxing ordeal while traveling with her son has gone viral.
On July 19, Gabby’s travel plans were thrown into chaos due to the widespread IT outages that affected transport around the world.
Gabby, who does not share her last name on the internet, was planning to fly from Kansas City back home with her 14-month-old baby, but their initial flight was canceled and rescheduled for the next morning.
The mom-of-one told Newsweek that they rerouted them through Detroit and then to Jacksonville via the connection.
“Once we got to Detroit, my flight kept getting delayed all day. They boarded and deboarded us twice because of mechanical and then [had] staffing issues because of the IT outage,” Gabby said.
At 10 p.m., Delta Air Lines canceled the flight without the option to rebook an alternative, hotel and food voucher or their luggage. Stranded in Detroit with her baby, Gabby endured a chaotic scene at the airport.
“We stayed in baggage claim for over an hour trying to find our bags. Mounds of baggage piled everywhere; lines to speak to a Delta agent were 200 people deep; and the Delta help line was down,” she said.
Luckily, Gabby managed to secure a hotel room 30 minutes away for the night, but she struggled to find a way home as Delta couldn’t rebook her for at least 3 days, with no guarantee those flights wouldn’t be canceled as well.
Eventually, Gabby decided she and her son would take the 36-hour train ride back to Jacksonville.
Gabby told Newsweek that she had felt great about traveling solo with her son, but when a quick trip turned into a five-day ordeal, she had to “lean on little kindnesses from strangers to make it home.”
The 27-year-old documented the small acts of kindness that helped her and her son get through the experience: “To them, it may have seemed like a small gesture, but to me and my son, it was everything.”
Gabby added: “It really did restore my faith in humanity and community. They showed us kindness when we needed it most.”
In the clip, which has been viewed over 21.9 million times, Gabby (@notaregularnanny on Instagram) recounted all the ways in which fellow passengers helped her: a mom gave up her toddler’s seat on a downgraded plane; another lent her a phone charger; and a navy surgeon offered diapers for her son.
Friends and family also scrambled to find connections in Detroit and Washington, D.C., to assist the mother-son pair.
One person in particular left a lasting impression on Gabby; the driver who insisted they stay safely in his car rather than waiting in the train station for their Amtrak late at night.
“He gave up close to an hour of time that he could have been taking more riders and making money doing so,” Gabby told Newsweek.
“I was lucky enough to raise close to $1,000 to give him as a thank-you after I made it home,” she said.
The driver, a father working to bring his family from Mongolia to the U.S., said that, by helping Gabby and her son, he was protecting his own family back home.
“His response was that he simply did ‘what any other dad would do’,” Gabby added.
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