Airlines tend to receive all kinds of harsh feedback from disgruntled travelers. But they do the best they can—and sometimes much more than that.

Just ask passenger Peggy Uhle, who will be forever grateful to Southwest Airlines after they helped her through a real family trauma.

When Peggy Uhle boarded her flight from Chicago to Columbus, Ohio, she turned off her cell phone as the plane rolled away from the gate.

But she and her fellow passengers didn’t get very far, because the plane suddenly turned around on the tarmac at Midway Airport and taxied back toward the gate.

Peggy and the rest of the passengers had no idea what was happening at all.

Once the plane was anchored at the gate, a flight attendant approached Peggy and asked her to get off. Peggy thought she had boarded the wrong plane, but when she got back inside the terminal, a gate agent told her to call her husband. He had been forced to contact Southwest Airlines because Peggy’s phone was turned off. But luckily, the airline managed to get the two spouses in contact with each other at the last moment.

It turned out that Peggy’s 24-year-old son had suffered a serious head injury and was in a coma in Denver, Colorado.

Peggy had barely taken in the shocking news before a staffer explained that the airline had reticketed her on the next direct flight to Denver and arranged all of the other practical details. For free, of course!

“They offered a private waiting area, rerouted my luggage, allowed me to board first, and packed a lunch for when I got off the plane in Denver. My luggage was delivered to where I was staying, and I even received a call from Southwest asking how my son was doing,” Peggy Uhle told BoardingArea.com.

Source: Shutterstock

Thanks to the airline’s incredible service, Peggy was able to quickly get in touch with her family and travel to her son to give him the support he needed—without having to pay a dime.

Today, her son has fully recovered from his serious head injury.

Please share if you also think it was fantastic that the airline helped this family so much!