Sometimes the best gifts are not wrapped. An Ohio dad named Hal Vaughan has left the internet in tears after he booked six plane tickets in order to spend Christmas with his flight attendant daughter.
The story went viral after one of Hal’s many seatmates shared a Facebook post about the sweet gesture. “I had the pleasure of sitting next to Hal on my flight back home. His daughter Pierce was our flight attendant who had to work over Christmas,” Mike Levy wrote on Monday, December 24. “He decided he would spend the holiday with her. So, he is flying on each of her flights today and tomorrow around the country to spend time with his daughter Christmas. What a fantastic father!”
Levy included a smiling selfie with Hal, and a picture of Pierce in her uniform.
The following day, Pierce revealed on Facebook that her dad made it on every flight and even traveled first-class from Florida to Detroit! “(Christmas miracle),” she joked. “Shoutout to Mike Levy for being a great first class passenger & helping us to understand how cool this actually is!”
Hal flew from New Orleans to Detroit, to Fort Meyers, back to Detroit, then to Hartford, Atlanta and Denver, per Atlanta’s WXIA. It was Hal’s first time observing Pierce at work: he broke his neck right after she graduated from flight attendant school.
“I’d never been without my parents on Christmas,” Pierce told the station. “So my mom took one for the team and stayed home with all the pets so he could take his first trip since the accident with me.”
Delta praised both Hal and Pierce. “We appreciate all of our employees for working during the holidays to serve Delta customers, and love seeing this awesome dad having the chance to spend Christmas with his daughter — even while crisscrossing the country at 30,000 feet,” a spokesperson for the airline said in a statement obtained by NBC Chicago.
