Pilot turns plane back so family won’t miss funeral

The pilot of a Delta Airlines flight turned the plane around to pick up a Phoenix mom and her children on the way to their dad’s funeral.

Marcia Short’s husband of 32 years wished to be buried by his family in Tennessee. The 56-year-old died of lung cancer and his body was flown to Memphis Dec. 19, one day before the Sunday funeral.

So when the Shorts’ Dec. 19 flight out of Phoenix was delayed by more than an hour and the gate to their connecting flight in Minneapolis closed without them, they fell in despair.

“The heartache and thought of missing that flight hurt tremendously,” Marcia’s daughter Nicole told the Daily News via Facebook.

Through tears, the Shorts began waving their arms and screaming in a desperate attempt to catch the pilot’s attention.

They pleaded with an attendant who said nothing could be done to stop the plane from taking off.

Marcia was consoling her daughters when the Delta employee got a call, the pilot had seen them and was returning to the gate to let the family board.

“When the phone rang at the desk and she said it was the pilot who insisted on bringing that plane back to the gate to let us on more tears came,” Nicole Short wrote to The News. “But these ones were happy tears.”

A Delta spokesperson identified the pilot as Captain Adam Cohen of Endeavor Air, a Delta Airlines subsidiary.

“This Pilot deserves more praise than my family can give him,” Nicole Short wrote. “I hope others reading this will think twice and spread more kindness around.”