Delta Airlines: Total Suckage

7Jun/103

Delta Airlines: Total Suckage

This past weekend I attended a fantastic wedding for a good friend from high school (congratulations Mandar & Madeline!) Unfortunately I also experienced firsthand why Delta was rated the worst customer experience.

I had a connecting flight through Cincinnati, which is approximately 1.5 hours from Indianapolis. Here is how this final leg of my journey home went with Delta:

6:00pm: Arrival at Cincinnati. 8:25pm flight initially showing on time departure.
7:00pm: I finish my dinner. Flight is delayed until 9:20pm. Told that they are waiting on a single flight attendant who was flying in from Indy.
8:30pm: Our flight is delayed again until 10:25pm. Told that our entire crew has not even left Indy yet. No other crews available, so our plane just sits there empty as the stores in the airport begin to close.
9:45pm: Crew coming from Indy is finally en-route and scheduled to arrive in Cinci at 10:58pm.
11:15pm: Crew has supposedly arrived, though I only saw the pilot briefly enter our gangway.
11:55pm: Told the flight will be canceled since they crew is now "over their hours". Incredulous that this simple arithmetic wasn't performed before they left Indy.
12:05am: Given the option to stay the night and fly out on 1:30pm flight the next day, or take a bus that will arrive in an hour to drive us to Indy. I go with the bus because I miss home and losing an entire day sucks.
1:20am: About 20 of us board the bus for Indy.
3:00am: Bus arrives at Indy airport. No taxis anywhere.
3:15am: Find out that no taxis are allowed to pickup passengers at the airport before 4am (per airport policy). After dialing a few companies I finally wake up some independent guy who is willing to take me home.
4:25am: Arrive home after a $55 cab ride.

So I now will actively avoid flying Delta or United.

Filed under: rant, travel Leave a comment

pete

As a “frequent flyer” I have many less than stellar experiences with airlines. I flew internationally 7 times last year, and often it's hit or miss. I will say that US Air was by far the worst (flew with them twice and they ranked #6 and #7 on the list). Swiss, and in general European carriers are more friendly and you get better service. United and Continental both were above average for those trips as well.

Domestically things get tricky and it often just depends on where you live. Indy is not a hub for anyone, so frequently you'll have to take connecting flights, and this is when things break down. Chance of lost luggage gets higher, chance of missing connections gets higher. When I lived in Colorado, United was awesome since DIA is a hub and I could fly nearly anywhere direct. I had very few problems with them domestically or internationally.

The crew “over their hours” has happened to me before too, and yeah it's really annoying to deal with, I also ended up taking a bus to get to the airport I was connecting out of, but still had to wait a day to fly out.

Even with all the problems that can occur with air travel, keep in mind that you are flying. You are in the air, off the ground, going 600 miles per hour through the sky. You have to admit that's pretty freaking cool.
On airline reading there are some really good articles here: http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/
http://fortes.com/ Fortes

No Delta and no United — with mergers and acquisitions, who's left for you to fly? Southwest and JetBlue?
http://mike.shannonandmike.net Mike B.

A valid point. I'm more of a paper tiger – if the airline has cheap flights and hasn't screwed me recently I'll probably book