I had planned a short trip to San Jose for President’s Day weekend since I had Monday off and found a good deal on a flight to San Jose. Sure the flight connected in Atlanta which sounded crazy to me, but little did I know what the airline gods had in store for me!!!
I arrived at DTW a couple hours before my 1:40pm flight to Atlanta. It was a nice day and I was expecting a relatively relaxing day at a couple of airports. I had all my reservations planned and all signs were pointing to a nice weekend. While waiting for my flight, however, I noticed they were predicting a bit of snow for Atlanta. This made me a bit nervous as I know the south isn’t so good at dealing with snow. I went onto Delta’s website and found warnings and cautions about traveling to Atlanta! I was now concerned.
Since there was no good reason (other than it being Delta’s favorite hub) to go to Atlanta, I got in what was to be my first of MANY lines to talk to the gate agent about putting me on a different flight (something Delta.com had suggested I might add). However, the agent was terribly unhelpful, and told me all the flights to San Jose or San Francisco were “sold out”. I was pretty skeptcal as I think they likely could have routed me through another hub. She assured me that there were no delays down there and “everything would be fine”.
However, everything was NOT fine! When I got to Atlanta, it was snowing very lightly. I thought maybe the flight would still take off as planned. This was around 4pm. My flight was scheduled for 7:01pm (DL1579). Even though many flights were canceled, mine was still scheduled. They didn’t actually cancel it until after 5pm. So I trudged down to the service center for my first “rebooking”. They claimed there was no way I could get to SF until the next evening, and offered me a flight to LA instead that was taking off that evening. I grudingly accepted it (knowing full well I would have to rearrange all my plans in the process).
So I was put on a 9:30pm flight to LAX (DL2099) that had a delayed departure time of 11pm. I figured this was better as I could still salvage Saturday anyway. So I waited at the gate for hours, and they were booking people, making announcements about the flight, etc. All seemed good to go until about 10:30 when they suddenly delayed the flight to 11:30pm. It wasn’t long after that they canceled this one as well. So it was after 11pm, and I was in yet another line. Obviously too late to get to any hotel, I know knew I’d be spending my night at the airport. It was well after midnight by the time I got rebooked onto a morning flight to LAX (DL2083) at 9:45am. Still seemed hopeful as I’d have half a day on the west coast now…. But it was getting a bit silly at this point. They obviously weren’t very willing to work with me as I kept trying to get them to send me back to Michigan, but they claimed there was nothing available.
Sleeping at the airpot is terribly un-fun. First of all, they don’t even dim the lights, so unless you have an eye mask or something, you are stuck sleeping in the light. I’m not a very heavy sleeper either, so everytime I heard a sound I would wake up. And it’s very difficult to sleep anyway, when you are all stressed out about being stuck at the airport! Delta gives you a crappy overnight kit, but nothing resembling a blanket or pillow. By the time I got there, there were no decent benches left either. Needless to say, I got maybe an hour’s worth of sleep… and was awoken to…
MORE CANCELED FLIGHTS!!! At this point, it hadn’t been snowing for probably 8 hours or so. Apparently, they have absolutely no facilities to deal with cold weather in Atlanta, which is, btw, the world’s busiest airport…. No, I don’t quite get it either. Anyway, I got in line this time at about 6am… it was probably close to 9 by the time I actually talked to an agent. I’m thinking I spent a total of EIGHT HOURS or so in that same line!! Nuts if you ask me! Anyway, yes, they put me on yet ANOTHER flight to LAX, this time at 1:45pm (DL2087). Gosh, this was getting old…. it was a bright sunny morning in Atlanta, btw. Beautiful morning for a flight. Unfortunately, I wasn’t flying international as they apparently took precedence.
Still, i finally did get half an hour of sleep while waiting for this flight. And at this point, I had pretty much given up on anything approaching a productive vacation. I was gonna have to be content with some decent weather and actually getting to see the ocean. But, alas, this one wasn’t to be either! I guess even though they canceled thousands of flights, the attendants for those flights were nowhere to be found! Without flight attendants, no flight, I guess!! I don’t remember the exact departure time but it was pushing 5pm by the time we actually left. I will say this, once the flight attendants DID arrive, they really expedited getting us on the plane.
So eventually, I did get to LA, and Delta rescheduled my return flight so that I could also return from LAX as at this point it was obviously not going to make much sense to get up to San Francisco. All in all, I was VERY disappointed with how Delta dealt with the whole situation. Most frustrating of all was the fact that they had ample opportunity to reroute me in Detroit, but ignored the pending problem and sent me into the storm anyway. I also felt they needed a lot more agents and customer support to deal with all the people. They had 2-4 people staffing the Service Recovery Center. It is unacceptable to have to wait 3+ hours just to get a rescheduled flight if you ask me!
The only cool part of the whole ordeal was that on my final flight (the one that actually took off) were two actors. Ian Somerhalder (from Lost and the Vampire Diaries) was standing right next to me talking on a cell phone. And Dennis Haysbert (better known as President Palmer from 24 or from the Allstate ads) was there too. I wasn’t sure until I heard his DEEP voice. Kindof cool, if I must say so!!!
Moral of the story? Book direct flights whenever possible!!!
