US domestic airlines suck. Part of the problem is that, they simply don’t care. Airlines have almost no incentive to be good. Hell, they’re all bankrupt. They don’t care what you say about them. All they care about is wringing every last cent from you. Remember when you used to be able to eat on board? Sure it wasn’t that great a meal, but you could eat and they’d provide you with special meals if necessary. Now? Nope, if you’re lucky you get to buy your own meal from them, just as crappy just more expensive. And no food for you if you’re on a restricted diet. Now they’re even talking about getting you to pay to get your luggage out of the plane in a reasonable amount of time. They just don’t care about the experience you have as a customer. And even better, what you always suspected but were never sure… the excuses they give you when they’re flights are delayed? Yup. Lies.

So they all suck, but Delta goes above and beyond in their sucktitude. I mean, most of the other airlines (and generally I’m talking United and Continental since those are who I usually fly) suck in sort of passive ways. They’re late all the time, they have crappy movies, the planes are old, etc… The problems are environmental. Delta, on the other hand, seems to actively suck. They go out of their way to make things worse for you.

I sometimes get tricked into flying Delta because they are partners with Continental where I have most of my miles. The last 3 out of 3 trips I’ve flown on Delta have been actively, actively terrible. Let me focus on my recent wonderful experience with this airline, since it still bruises my mind with it’s recency. My flight, booked through Expedia, was actually an Avianca flight, but it was a Delta code. Sometime after we booked it, the flight was canceled and I was automatically moved to a later flight. Great. Unfortunately, Maria’s ticket bought with points was moved, but a ticket was not issued for some ridiculous airliney reason.

We learned from Expedia that we should go in a little early to the airport and they’d issue her a new ticket. Easy squeasy. Right. We get there over 2 hours early and get everything checked in and then head to the ticketing counter. The Aviance people were noticeably very nice, but after spending some time trying to figure things out they broke the news to us that we had to go to Delta for this - which was in another terminal. Stupidly, instead of hopping the monorail we decided to hoof it and ended up milling around JFK for a bit, bouncing around in Delta’s awful terminal from place to place until we finally arrive at the right place.

First of all, it doesn’t seem like a difficult concept right? Ticket cancelled, reservation already in, issue new ticket. Done. Well, the customer service agent, took about 10 minutes to understand the problem. All the while, typing really… really.. slowly despite being well aware of our time constraint. Providing us with no feedback as to what was happening or even really that she understood the problem, she barely said a word to us. Then at some point she simply gets up and walks out of the desk - no word. Stunned we watched, but were gratified to see that she was getting a supervisor, now we were getting somewhere.

We explained to the supervisor our problem, which she understood immediately and we were no sooner done with our explanation than she began casting blame. Her first and only concern was making sure that we knew this was all our fault somehow and that we needed to come yesterday because this was not a fast process. That it was our fault, despite Expedia clearly telling us it was a quick process and we should come a little early. Literally, she said we weren’t going to make our flight and it was our fault. There was no attempt to work with us or even, simply not point fingers and figure out the best solution.

After the wonderful experience our original lady sat back down at her desk and began calling someone. As she was put on hold, she reiterated again to us what a long process this was and how we weren’t going to make our flight and how this was all our fault for not coming. She was on hold, maybe for 3 or 4 minutes. Then she spoke to someone for maybe an additional minute, hung up, typed for a second and then printed out our ticket. Seriously, I’m not exaggerating. This long process that required us to come a day in advance was calling someone and waiting on hold for 4 minutes. I can’t make that up.

Then. THEN. She realizes her stapler is out of staples, we are late. Seriously late. We’re going to miss our international flight, late. She knows this. We’re like “We don’t need it stapled, we need to go.” To which she says, slowly “No, don’t worry, I don’t want you to lose anything.” Then she gets up and slowly walks to her neighbor, chats for a little, asks for her stapler, sloooowly staples it, chats some more, slowly walks back to the desk and hands it back to us.

Seriously. That’s way above and beyond the call of duty for bad service. From the bottom up it was simply and offensively terrible. It is like that all the time. If I have anything to do with it, that will be my last Delta flight ever.

UPDATE: Here’s another awesome account of how terrible Delta is.

← newer Arrgh, Leopard! Why have you forsaken me??  ↑  Breakfast Links: Archery, Legend & Big Screen BSG older →

TwitterCounter for @nybble73
Oct 26th, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: rant · travel