Kyle Stacy forced to skip Thailand Heli Blowout
Delta Airlines causes turmoil
Kyle Stacy had to announce on his Facebook page that he cannot attend Thailand Heli Blowout. He was about to fly to Thailand, when a tiny glitch ruined the trip.
Kyle has written his story on Facebook:
Here is a picture of my helicopter travel case. I have traveled all over the USA and the world with it for the past 7 years. As you can see it's been beaten up, dented and scratched due to being on hundreds of airplanes. It has been accepted by American Airlines, United, Southwest, Delta (2 years ago), Frontier, JetBlue, Lufthansa, British Airways, Qantas,Virgin Australia, Cathay Pacific, just to name a few.
However, yesterday, Delta insisted that it is now too big to travel on their airline. "We're very sorry Mr. Stacy but our regulations are 80" and your case is 83". Even if it leaves the Orlando airport, upon arriving in South Korea they will not transfer it since their regulation is 73". Sorry"
After wasting an hour and a half of my time (I arrived at the airport almost 3 hours early) I went into the airport and purchased a small little suitcase for $100.00 to put my clothes into. Ran down to my car, moved my clothes from the heli case to my new suitcase, put the heli case in the car and went back into the airport. Unfortunately with all of this time spent, I missed my first flight to Atlanta. Every other flight to Atlanta that night was fully booked and they could not get me there until 10 am the next day, which would obviously make me miss my remaining connecting flights.
I would like to apologize to Enrico, Tom Motor, SAB and everyone at the Thailand Heli Blowout for having to cancel so late. I did everything I could to still attend the event, but I just could not make it happen.
This is not the first time, and no doubt, not the last either, when a trouble happens to an RC helicopter pilot caused by an airline company. Raquel Bellot had to fly with a helicopter borrowed from Marius Blöchinger at Rotor Live, because the helicopter case just hasn't arrived on time. After four flights and it turned up on the last day.
Last year the Team Area51-rc - Dave Dijkmans and Carlos Rossi Vallés - had to cancel Heliwood attendance in Hungary, because of the Ryanair strike and the canceled flight just days before the trip. It is sad, the services of airlines are getting similar to gambling: can we make it? can't we?
