My Delta Story

I long for the good old days before Delta swallowed Northwest. It's never been more painfully evident than my experience with this week's trip.

In general, since Delta absorbed Northwest, I've seen a number of changes, all of them for the worse.

Delta uses more commuter flights, even on routes like Indy to Atlanta. Those small planes mostly don't have a first class, and those that do have a very limited number of seats and they're not that much better than the coach seats.

All of a sudden the status level I had achieved as a frequent flyer on Northwest seems to be no big deal on Delta. With Northwest, when the flight had a first class cabin, I always got upgraded. Well, maybe not always, but I can't tell you the last time I was on a Northwest flight where I qualified for an upgrade and didn't get it.

With Delta, it happens about half of the time. Partly because of the little commuter planes and partly because the combined pool of frequent flyers are competing for fewer seats.

Then there's the customer service. Northwest had a labor issue before the merger, so there were a lot of bitter and unhappy flight attendants. But the old Northwest beats Delta in customer service hands-down and across the board. In every conceivable customer-facing experience I can report.

So that brings me to this week's trip.

Took off from Indy on time in the little commuter plane with no first class that was overbooked. Northwest used to run the route with a slightly larger plane and guaranteed first class upgrade. OK, that's just me bellyaching.

Got to the intermediate airport, and found out as I approached the gate for my next flight that it had been cancelled.

Waited about 20 minutes to talk to an agent, who couldn't help me. Apparently all of the flights to my destination the rest of the day, including those that connect through other cities, were oversold. There was no way I could get to that airport until the next day.

But the agent suggested that if I wanted to switch my destination to another city nearby, that could still get me there in the same day. So I called my client to confirm I could get picked up at that airport, then used my cell to call the booking line to avoid having to stand in line another 20 minutes for an agent.

Booking line said, sure, if you head for gate 25 now, you can hop on the flight to the nearby destination. She told me she had me rebooked, and all I had to do was get the boarding pass from the gate agent.

Well, I got to the gate, and the gate agent was flustered. See, she had about a dozen of us who were trying to catch this same flight, because we all were on the original flight that got cancelled. And she could not get the computer to process our rebookings. And she could not figure out why.

So she had us each give her our original boarding passes, and two of the passengers worked! So she gave them boarding passes and sent them to the plane. The rest of us she still tried various things to get ours rebooked, but the system just refused to work with her.

She somehow managed to get one more passenger cleared and sent him through the gate. He came back 2 minutes later to tell her they'd already closed the door and wouldn't let him on.

So she finally gave up, and told the rest of us to try the booking line.

I called them again, and they rebooked me for the next flight to the alternate city, leaving about 4 and a half hours later. I asked about my bag, can they make sure it follows me?

She said, "No problem, that's automatic". Right.

I get on that flight, arrive at the destination, and you guessed it - no bag.

So of course I went to the agent, who was the only agent taking care of all 8 of us (the same group of folks from the original cancelled flight), but was also the only agent on duty and had to check in folks arriving for other flights. So it took awhile.

Then, she couldn't get the computer to accept our baggage claims. She was puzzled by that, but actually was the first person who was able to get somewhat creative. She gave us all her direct number, took down our information, and promised she'd get our claims in the system just as soon as she could.

From the hotel, I called her. She confirmed that the claim had been filed, but so far nobody had updated anything. I asked if the bag was still in Memphis, or maybe had it been sent to the original destination? She didn't know. Could I call the other airport to find out if it was there? No, the system doesn't allow for that.

So I waited a couple of hours and called the 800 baggage number. The person who took my call also told me that so far there was no information about the bag. She couldn't give me any information, because nobody had updated the record in the system yet. Again I asked if there was a way to track it down by calling somebody and got the same answer as before.

She clearly didn't care in the slightest whether I ever got my bag.

I went to work the next day in my shorts and golf shirt. The client was great about it.

The bag showed up at my hotel late the next night, about 36 hours after my flight arrived.

I would bet that the other 8 who got re-routed with me had a very similar experience. Of course, I already know they all didn't get their bags rerouted with them.

So we're down to Delta, United, American. All three have no apparent interest in or understanding of the concept of customer service.

I want to start a new airline. I could do a better job running mine than whoever's running those big three. But then again, it's not like that would be very hard.