Delta Bumps Passengers For Gators Hoops...

((HT: First Coast News))

Morgan Watkins over at The Gainesville Sun reported the Gators basketball team's charter was grounded by maintenance issues as the team was heading to UConn for their game Monday night.

From Watkins:

The airplane originally meant for the basketball team required maintenance, he wrote, and, "due to operational need and aircraft routing requirements as a result of the busy travel holiday," Delta decided to use the other airplane and cancel the commercial flight for which it had been initially scheduled.

"Delta apologizes to those customers on Delta Connection flight 5059, operated by ExpressJet, who were impacted by the resulting cancellation of their flight," he stated.

Gainesville Airport spokesperson Laura Aguiar told the Sun that passengers were either given vouchers for later flights or were re-routed to other flights out of the city. Some of those Sunday passengers, however, didn't leave Gainesville until Monday.

Gators team spokesman Denver Parler told the newspaper he wasn't aware passengers were displaced.

Of course...

Here was the end result for the Gators in Storrs...
((HT: GatorZone))

But Watkins seems to stumble on passengers who were initially told that the Delta plane the Gators eventually boarded had "mechanical problems," and then (magically) the Gators basketball team started boarding the flight...

Not a surprise...