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A Bend, Ore., man took to Facebook this weekend to describe the incivility he alleged was inflicted on a fellow passenger by Alaska Airlines.

On Friday, concert and event promoter Cameron Clark was traveling out of Oregon's Redmond Municipal Airport with his family and witnessed what he described on Facebook as “the worst of humanity” when airline staff on duty appeared to ignore and refuse special assistance to a couple he thought was “disabled/mentally and physically challenged.”

Clark estimated the couple to be in their 70s and said that the man later told him he had late-stage Parkinson’s disease, that his companion had MS and that he was trying to get to Bellingham, Wash., to see his daughter.

“He had a hard time walking,” Clark wrote on Facebook, “No one offered him a wheelchair or asked how they could be helpful. He stumbled off toward the safety inspection line. Predictably, he didn't understand/comprehend their restriction of his luggage, and got stuck in security.”

Throughout the weekend, Clark’s Facebook post created a flurry of negative and outraged comments, which Alaska Airlines responded to with a series of Facebook posts of its own.

The passenger did not get on his Friday flight, but did fly Saturday and is visiting with his daughter at an alternate location, Alaska Airlines spokesperson Paul McElroy told NBC News.

The airline refunded the passenger's initial ticket price and provided complimentary round-trip transportation for his trip, McElroy said.

He added that while the airline has not yet contacted the passenger, it has contacted his companion and issued an apology. “There are things we should have done better and Horizon Airlines will be issuing a post on Facebook to that effect later today,” said McElroy. (Regional airline Horizon Air and Alaska Airlines are both owned by the Alaska Air Group.)

Coincidentally, the airline on Monday is meeting with a representative of Open Doors Organization, an independent disability advocacy group. "We're going to leverage their visit and ask them to help us review what we did with this customer to see if we could have done better," McElroy said.

Eric Lipp, the group's executive director, said there are laws to help passengers with disabilities and extra services airlines can and are willing to provide. “But the law says the passenger has to self-identify,” Lipp told NBC News. “Otherwise, it’s a puzzle. The breakdown here is that the passenger didn’t self-identify and the airline didn’t have the right codes in the system to get him services he was entitled to.”

Find more by Harriet Baskas on StuckatTheAirport.com and follow her on Twitter. 

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Faulty instructions by air traffic controllers caused a near mid-air collision involving an American Airlines Boeing 777-200 and a U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo plane near New York City in January 2011, a federal report said.

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The report by the National Transportation Safety Board said the airliner and the C-17 were put on a collision course in the dark over the Atlantic Ocean about 88 miles off New York after controllers mistakenly instructed the planes to converge in the same area. The C-17 was one of two flying in formation.

The error was revealed by a radar data processing system before the planes came into contact, said the report. At one point, they were less than 2,000 feet apart, it said.

"That guy passed us now and that was not good," the pilot of American Airlines flight 951 told the controllers at New York Air Traffic Control Center, the country's busiest.

A collision-avoidance system aboard the American Airlines plane helped to avoid a collision, alerting the pilot to the presence of the military planes.

Ann Marie Brennan, a manager at the air-traffic control office, was quoted in the report, released on August 2, as saying the radar display showed the two planes "pass right over each other".

The incident occurred on January 20, 2011. The American Airlines flight had taken off from John F. Kennedy international airport and was bound for Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The flight was carrying about 250 people, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

DALLAS — Southwest Airlines said Sunday it has begun filing refunds to customers who were accidentally billed multiple times for a single flight, after a half-price online ticket promotion backfired.

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The special sale designed to celebrate Southwest's reaching the three million mark in Facebook fans was supposed to give customers who booked flights on Friday a 50 percent discount on certain fares.

Instead, hundreds of frustrated would-be fliers wound up posting stories on Facebook about how their credit and debit cards were being repeatedly charged, in some cases 20 or more times for a single flight. They also tweeted and blogged about the related financial hassles, which ranged from drained checking accounts and bounced checks to overdrawn credit limits and canceled bank cards.

The company said Sunday it has identified all customers impacted by the problem and has begun filing refunds to the affected bank accounts.

"These refunds are currently being processed, but timing will vary depending on the individual bank," Southwest said in a statement to its website. "If a refund has not yet posted to your account, we recommend contacting your bank."

The company, which described its response as an "all hands on deck approach," said it will also pay customers for any overdraft fees caused by the additional charges.

Southwest Airlines is based in Dallas, Texas and offers flights to more than 70 U.S. cities

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia's air safety regulator says Qantas Airways Ltd. has suspended a pilot for attempting to fly while under the influence of alcohol.

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Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman Peter Gibson said Monday the woman exceeded the limit for pilots of 0.02 percent alcohol in the blood in a test last week.

Gibson said he did not know her blood-alcohol reading. The blood-alcohol limit for driving in Australia is 0.05 percent.

Australian Associated Press reported the pilot was detected last Monday as she was about to fly a Boeing 767-300 from Sydney to Brisbane.

Gibson said 45 pilots had exceeded the alcohol limit in 51,000 tests in Australia since 2008.