Ruff trip.
Delta Airlines sent an adorable puppy to the wrong city three times in a hellish 36-hour cross-country trip — and employees may have tried to sweep it under the rug, according to reports Tuesday.
Josh Schlaich, of Boise, Idaho, had his 8-week-old pup, Ren, shipped from a breeder in Virginia on Saturday, but the poor pooch was accidentally flown to Detroit, Los Angeles (or possibly Las Vegas) and Salt Lake City before finally arriving the next day,
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“The dog [was] in a crate for two days,” Schlaich fumed to the station. “It’s a culmination of uncaring customer service and bad logistics.”
When Schlaich arrived at the airport in Boise on Sunday afternoon, he was handed the wrong dog — one of Ren’s siblings, who was supposed be delivered to a different family, he said.
“It’s very concerning to us,” Schlaich said.
But instead of confessing to the mistake, an airline worker claimed the pup’s flight had simply been “delayed,” according to KTVB.
“Hey, just wanted to let you know the dog’s flight has been delayed, and the dog is going to stay the night here,” a person claiming to be a Delta employee told him over the phone, according to the station.
“Here’s the number of a person who’s going to take care of it. His name is Chris. You need to call them if you want any more information. Thanks, bye,” the employee said, according to Schlaich.
But Schlaich said the number was out of service. He added that he called Delta several times only to get hung up on.
“We finally got the information. They kind of vaguely said, ‘Well, it will go out on a flight tomorrow,'” said Schlaich, who soon found out the dog was kept at a boarding site overnight.
Delta later apologized for screwing the pooch — and offered the owner a refund, according to the station.
“We know pets are important members of the family and apologize for the delayed shipment of a dog, which is now in the hands of its owner, after it was routed to the wrong destination,” Delta said in a statement.
The dog was supposed to be sent from Richmond, Virginia, to Boise with a connecting flight in Minneapolis. Instead, it was accidentally sent to Detroit and either LA or Vegas, before being rerouted to Salt Lake City, Schlaich told the station.
Schlaich believes Ren was separated from his litter-mate in Detroit, where the dog was likely put on the wrong plane. The pooch’s sibling arrived in Boise early Sunday afternoon while Ren didn’t show up until Sunday evening, according to KTVB.
The mishap follows a series of screw-ups involving airlines and pets, including the death of a dog on a United Airlines flight last week. In that case, a flight attendant forced a Queens family to put the dog in the overhead luggage compartment.
“I figured because of the national attention to this issue that it would’ve been better — rather than worse,” Schlaich said.
