Thursday, October 4, 2007

Just like they tell you, when flying internationally . . .


. . . arrive 2 hours before departure. For years now, I have thought 1.5 hours standing in line or sitting in a waiting room was plenty of time despite their warnings . . . . Then, we burned up 30 minutes lugging four-70 pound suitcases to the ticketing line. One hour was not enough for them to resolve my ticketing irregularities and get me to the gate in time. As they waited for supervisors to respond in person and on the phone they passed the cutoff time for printing my boarding pass. They needed to reissue my ticket for the following day. Had I arrived earlier they would have admitted their failure and issued the ticket and maybe other perks without cost. Certainly it was their fault? Certainly they could have arrested me for acting annoyed (apologies to Ed Munch) at their incompetence?

Instead, I had to lug my suitcases back to my son`s new home and I had the privilege of paying an extra $150 for today's ticket. They told me they were doing me a favor because it could have been $1500 more. Well, I guess $150 is better than bail.

Exceedingly irate Delta Airlines traveler
RoseMary

2 comments:

PretaMulatta said...

NEVER EVER EVER have i had a good experience flying Delta. it began with trips between NYC & Panama City Beach (where my parents live) and the miserable stop in Atlanta, where if they dont have enough passengers, they just cancel the flight.

then came the locking of the doors in the international terminal at JFK on December 20 because there were 'too many travelers', so they just figured they'd lock people OUT. i showed up at JFK a mere 4 hours before my flight to Maranhao (connecting in Sao Paulo) with ONE bag (which they proceeded to lose and not find for more than a month) and still barely made my flight.

I wont mention the time they denied boarding to my (then) fiance on his flight back to Norway because THEY needed to issue a paper ticket since he was connecting to Air France...

Riorose said...

It just goes to show you how naive I am. I actually believed that my situation was my fault because they needed to take care of their paperwork. So far, at least until the other day, I had never had a problem with them. British airlines lost my daughter's luggage one time and she never saw a penny of compensation for the month they were lost.