I don’t fly Delta, but it is heralded by many as the best carrier in the United States with good operational reliability and great customer service. Forgive me for being skeptical.
Yesterday, an employee was flying from New Orleans, LA to Panama City, FL. He had planned to drive (~6hrs), but was so tired from his redeye the night before that he claimed he could not make the journey. A flight on Delta via Atlanta or Uber were about the same price ($400) so I gave him the choice.
He chose Delta and I booked him a same-day flight, leaving in the early evening. He finished his appointments a bit early and reached the airport in New Orleans at 4:00p. Around the same time, he received notice that his evening flight was delayed. He called me and I told him that there was still time to confirm the 4:35p flight and that would allow him to make an earlier connecting flight to Panama City. I told him to ask the agent when he checked in and text me if there was a problem.
No Common Sense
He did, and the agent agreed to put him on the 4:35p flight since he only had hand baggage. But the earlier flight from from Atlanta to Panama City? Nope, “It’s not delayed so I cannot touch it for free. But you can pay a change fee plus difference in fare to do switch.”
Are you serious? She calculated a $75 change fee and a difference in fare of $52. I have no idea where she came up with that number. $75 is the same-day change fee, so why should there be a difference in fare? Second, the ticket was booked hours before the flight. It was in full Y. Were there even higher fares?
Such stupid and rigid inflexibility. With the delay on the original flight he would have only had about 20 minutes to connect in Atlanta. The Atlanta to Panama City flights were wide open, we paid full fare, so why not just put him on, make him happy, and get him to his destination earlier?
My employee argued with her and ended up missing the flight. He made me aware of what happened only after he missed the flight or else I would have told him to just take the flight and I’d sort it out while he was in the air.
So he ended up taking a 5:55p flight instead. That gave him a lot more time to connect in Atlanta, but he was too late for the earlier connection and was ultimately forced to stay with his original connection to Florida.
That aircraft was coming from Miami and was stuck on the tarmac in MIA after the shooting last night. He ended up leaving Atlanta 2hr,17min late and arriving into Panama City at 1am.
CONCLUSION
I get it. One second-hand experience is not enough to judge an airline. I am not “judging” Delta based upon this single incident. But in 2,000,000+ miles of flying I’ve never heard of anything as unreasonable as “your connecting flight is not delayed, so please wait four hours in Atlanta.” That is the antithesis of rational and reasonable customer service, let alone it was a full fare ticket that I could have cancelled within the 24-hour cool-off period.
To my readers who fly Delta, is this something normal? Because I can tell you that despite sometimes poor customer service, I never experienced this on American or United.
image: Tomás Del Coro / CC 2.0
that’s exactly my experience my DL at DFW. Summer afternoon t-storms rolling in soon and they asked for that fee for half-empty flight just 1 hour earlier, and ended up delaying for close to 4 hours.
More infuriating is their stupid 20-min rolling delays so you can NEVER ever leave the gate area to even go the lounge.
Only major loser ramp agent spin88 praises DL 24×7 on the UA forum even though he NEVER EVER posts a single message on the DL forum. Talk about being a transparent troll.
@ Matthew — Sounds like a bad agent. All airlines have them….
My point is that I have never encountered a United or American agent who did this.
There are plenty of American agents that do this. Just try to SDC via a different connecting city before a waiver or delay is posted but you know it’s coming anyway…. Delta is at least much more flexible in their rule set.
I agree. I am a loyal Delta flyer. I had to fly American, booked through my corporate travel site, last year. My original flight was showing a delay, yet it took off on time and arrived in Charlotte 45 minutes before my next flight was scheduled to leave. I tried to pull up my boarding pass for the connecting flight on my app and it had disappeared, so I went up to the gate agent. She said, “Your original flight was delayed so we did not think you would make your connection. Therefore we changed you to a flight this evening.” It was 11:00 am, I was at the gate 45 minutes early, and they removed me from my connecting flight and refused to give me my seat back. I had a paid ticket yet they refused to give me my seat back, and I had to wait over 6 hours in the airport. I went into the Admirals Club and all they would do was say “sorry” and offer me a measly $50 credit. I called American and asked for a manager and they still refused to do anything further. I hate American Airlines and refuse to fly them again. I have had irritating experiences on all airlines, including Delta, but this one with American was shocking.
“I’m not judging…” but I’m going to write a lengthy blog complaint about it.
Nice.
I’m judging the situation, not the airline.
Similar experience. Arrived on a international flight at ATL. I had a 2 hour connect time but made it through customs and immigration in 15 minutes or so. I had no checked luggage. There was an earlier flight to LGA that was wide open. I went to the gate and they refused to put me on it without a change fee because I “only” Silver medallion. Of course, my ticketed flight was overbooked and significantly delayed. Seems like Delta could have solved the overbooking issue AND earned some points with me but Delta doesn’t care about brownie points – only cold hard cash. I get it. I sucked it up and waited in Atlanta. After all, I could have paid the fee and left earlier.
The myth of Delta’s operational excellence is marginal, at best. In 2016, Delta was 85% on time. United was 82% and AA was 80% on time. For the average customer, these differences are hardly noticeable. If you flew 50 times it’s a matter of 2 or 3 more delays on AA or UA vs. DL. That’s why I fly on the best schedule at the lowest price. Totally free agent. Delta wants a premium to fly them but it not so clear that its worth anything at all. Read the story today on Bloomberg about airfare pricing. It looks like the chickens have come home to roost – airline loyalty is a thing of the past.
I had a similar situation with United where the outgoing flight was delayed considerably and would have resulted me missing my connection. The delayed flight was scheduled to arrive and depart after other flights to ORD which were on time. Rather than following the Delta logic of charging me a change fee and a fare upcharge, the United agent simply followed common sense and rebooked me on the intervening, on-time flight.
Delta plays a good marketing game, but I can say that after years and years of flying them simply because they were the big boys in Detroit, it’s almost all show. No better, but plenty worse when it comes to loyalty and common sense.
Basically, Delta stabs you in the back and stamps on your toes, just like everyone else. They just do it with a smile on their face.
I like how UA handles it better. If any leg is delayed the whole itinerary is considered delayed and agents have power to modify the whole trip not just specific legs.
I also have found UA to be very flexible in situations like you describe here.
I was booked on a 6am Delta flight ORD-JFK that was cancelled at 11pm the night before. Spent 1.5 hours on hold on one phone and eventually 45 min on hold on another phone with the Spanish-speaking line. The Spanish-speaking line answered first.
She said that United is their interline partner, but their morning flight had no space. I asked her which fare class needed to be open for her to rebook; she said Y. United was selling seats in Y on the flight, but she claimed there was nothing she could do. Ended up asking for a refund (which required another transfer) and booking a last-minute saver award with United (which was a terrible use of miles, but necessary to save the trip).
The only good thing about Delta is that their Basic Economy fares allow for a carry-on bag.
In my experience on DL, once my itinerary is flagged with IROP (as would have happened here, with the first delay), the mobile app and the website allow me to search for available options for rebooking (even when the delay is minor) and confirm my choice without charging me a difference in fare. I’m usually on heavily discounted economy tickets.
Delta is greedy. Delta killed its loyalty program. However, Delta is years ahead of United and American. They are by far the best of the 3.
I think HUCA would have been the right strategy here. I’m now on my 2nd year as a Delta Platinum (having defected from United at the end of 2015) and my experience is the same as George’s: in IRROPS one has nearly carte blanche to move to any reasonable flight with a seat.
What George said. That’s how it works for irrops. The DL app gives you lots of choices – even when there is a delay of only a few minutes. Yes, a few minutes! You then click on the flight you want, and there you have it.
With UA I have yet to see the irrops functionality work on the app. I see some red on the app (but not all the time with my many delayed UA flights), but I usually don’t see anything but the red. I have to call UA.
However, to change your flight to an early one … SDC’ing on UA is easier than on DL. With UA you have the app. With DL you have to call it in. The $75 fee is waived for DL Diamonds. However, you should not have had to pay a fare difference if you were truly on a full Y fare.
Hmmmm…”Henry LAX” is going blog to blog, trashing anyone who dares criticize UA, as well as posters on FT (like the ever-astute Spin88, who does better financial analysis than just about anyone). Smells fishy to me…
From a logistics standpoint, this has always infuriated me. You always want to use up your short term, certain, free space before your long term free space. It removes potential errors from the system. The mind boggles at an airline knowingly sending out a plane with empty seats now, and giving up the opportunity to potentially sell seats on a later flight which would open up if they allowed free standby at the gate (and/or opening themselves up to compensation claims for any currently unknown future delays on the future flight that could have been flying with less people if those people had moved up to an earlier, certain flight). I guess enough people are willing to pay the fee to make it worthwhile, but it’s incredibly inefficient from a systems perspective.