Delta, What Happened?

I’ve just completed an around the world adventure that saw me in relying on Delta Airlines to get through the US portion of the trip. I was scheduled to be home on the weekend but thanks to a combination of bad weather, faulty equipment (read planes), and long delays, I came one incident away from spending Christmas state side. Fortunately I’m back home though after a couple of days my luggage is still traveling.

You know the old saying, had I’ve known what I know now... and hind site is 20/20. Well had I of known what I know now I would have never flown into Bloomington IL because that is were the trouble started. The Bloomington regional airport is not equipped to operate in bad weather conditions. Ok, many airports don’t function in really bad weather but in the case of Bloomington, really bad includes ground fog. I was already very nervous about flying into that part of the world in December so had I have known this, I would have flown into Chicago and driven to Bloomington. Not that Chicago is without difficulties. That said it can manage flights while experiencing ground fog. It also has something Bloomington doesn’t, trans-Atlantic flights.

My itinerary in the US started with a flight from LAX to ATL and then onto BIL. The flight from LAX landed late enough that it ate up a large portion of my 3 hour layover. But this was of little consequence as weather had closed the Bloomington (and I believe Chicago area) airports. Delta used the weather as an excuse to avoid having to provide me with a hotel and meals. The Courtyard in Bloomington nicely didn’t charge me for that evening so things did work out. It also set the stage for things to come.

The rescheduled flight to Bloomington landed late but no matter as I was there before I needed to be. The flight out of Bloomington was canceled due to fog. In fact all flights out of Bloomington were canceled due to fog, Everyone knew that all flights would be canceled yet I couldn’t get Delta to do what United had done, gather everyone into a bus and take them to Chicago where I would have had a better chance of getting on a trans-Atlantic. As bad as Friday was, Saturday was worse. Oh, I should mention, because the cancelations were due to weather, I got stuck with the hotel bill.

On Saturday the weather looked good enough to fly and so I headed out to the airport with naive optimism. The incoming aircraft landed on time but no matter, I had a long layover. To add to the tyranny, we boarded the plane only to be told minutes later that we were to disembark. Apparently the crew had flown the plane to Bloomington.. this little airport in the middle of a corn field that maybe had a screw driver to fix things with... with an empty emergency oxygen tank. The choices on the table were, fly in a new bottle, have one driven down from Chicago or fly back to pick one up. The decision was to have one driven in from Chicago since the tank was considered Haz-Mat and couldn’t be flown. It was determined after the later flight from Atlanta to Bloomington had left that they actually could secure the tank and hence they could fly it in. So instead of driving one down from Chicago (2 hours wait) they decided to wait until the even later flight could carry in the tank (read 8 hour delay).

At the first sign of trouble I made enough of a fuss that I got a seat on the later flight which was now going to leave earlier. My best calculation put me in Atlanta 30 minutes prior to when the connecting flight was to leave. More delays by Delta put me in 30 minutes after the departure time and so I was left facing yet another day in an airport trying to get home. Right, I should mention that Delta customer (no) service tried to stick me with the hotel bill once again. However a combination of previous customer had just taken a few rounds out of them and the fact that this miss was completely Delta’s fault got me a hotel and food. However it took some talking to do it and they were very worried that other passengers would find out. My flight was rebooked but to my horror, I found out in the morning that it hadn’t been issued. I’m not certain but I’m going to guess that this is one of the biggest reasons my bags are still journeying about without me.

The new schedule had me fly to JFK (and no, I wasn’t very happy about flying from one overly busy airport to one with the worst record in the country). Keeping to custom, it came in late but fortunately with plenty of time to get the connecting flight. And of course, why break the string by having the final flight come in on time.

Summary, 8 scheduled flights, 2 canceled, 1 abandoned, and 5 arriving late, one of which was late enough to result in an extra day of travel.

At this point one can chalk the experience up to a bad combination of events and leave it at that. And I would except I used to fly Delta quite often and when things happened, the staff always took care of it, they knew how to bend the rules to some how paper over the bad experiences. The staff enabled things to happen. My experience on this trip was quite the opposite.

In general I found the Delta staff quite hostile and looking for every excuse or regulation or rule or what ever to ensure that things didn’t happen. Instead of enabling, they inhibited. In short, the culture of the company seems to have under gone a complete reversal in the last couple of years and it is sad. It is sad because I always took comfort that if something went wrong during my travels, I could count on customer service to help smoothen out the rough spots.. some how.. some way. Maybe I still didn’t get the flight that I needed but there was something on the table to ease the pain. This time the comfort offered was antidotes about customers that had gotten screwed over worse than I had, not an up lifting ending to my Delta experience.