Booking with Delta? Think again....

[vanisleboy]

Delta Air is merging with Northwest and their schedules are a mess and constantly changing.

We booked a family vacation to Bonaire. Originally we had booked and paid for a direct flight to Atlanta from Vancouver arriving at dinner time, overnight in Atlanta, and then board the once a week morning flight to Bonaire. After about five changes by Delta to our itinerary, we ended up with our direct flight to Atlanta canceled and replaced with a flight through Salt Lake with 33 mins. to change planes, arriving in Atlanta after 11pm. (We are traveling with our 7 year old)

I contacted Delta to change the flights to something more suitable, and was forced to pay a total of over $600 in various fees and taxes to change our flights to something that was 7 year old child and scuba gear in luggage friendly.

I wrote to Deltas corporate office about the fees, and they responded with:

Thank you for your e-mail describing the inconvenience you experienced
due to flight irregularities. We apologize for the difficulties you
encountered.

Delta's schedule is designed to meet the needs of our worldwide customer
base, while operating the airline cost effectively. We constantly review
the needs of all communities we serve and try to provide flights
according to both preference and demand.

In doing so, we have challenging decisions to make surrounding whether
we provide flights to a particular location, as well as what types of
aircraft we use to serve a location. This decision is influenced by our
need to best match aircraft capacity and frequency of service to
passenger demand.

We regret any difficulty you experienced due to a schedule change. Delta
and other airlines make schedule adjustments to compensate for changes
in the public's travel plans, and for other operational reasons. While
we want to avoid the problems you described, requirements make it
necessary to change flight times or cancel flights on occasion.

We are truly sorry for any interruption caused by this change, it is
important for you to know that our scheduling people are evaluating our
routes to ensure the most convenient schedules are provided to our
customers as we align the Delta and Northwest flight networks.

While we would like to offer special consideration in cases such as
yours, we are unable to honor the many similar requests that we receive
from others in equally deserving situations. We follow a consistent
policy to ensure that we are fair to everyone who travels with us.
Accordingly, we must respectfully decline your request.

I realize this is a disappointment, and trust you will understand our
position. We hope you will continue to make Delta your airline of
choice.

Sincerely,

Sammy Gates
Online Customer Support Desk


Needless to say We won't be flying with Delta or Northwest again.

 

[CheddarChick]

man I hate airlines.....why are all the great places in the middle of the ocean....

 

[robint]

I hate to tell you this but it is happening with ALL airlines. Flights are being cut rather than running half full, like they used to do.

In the past several years we have had airline changes right up to the day before our flights and once we were never even notified about a change!!! It was with AA and my husband was just checking the flight online the day before and noticed our flight number wasn't there, so after calling AA and 2+ hours on the phone, we ended up getting everything fixed. They had changed our flight to an hour earlier so we would have missed it, plus they had a different connecting flight with only 30 minute layover (no way our dive bags would have made the flight) and we were headed for a liveaboard so we HAD to have our gear arrive with us. We did get it all fixed - they had to move us to another flight later in the day so we had an adequate layover.... what a mess! I don't think I slept all night worrying if we would make it on our dive trip!

This was not our only problem with an airline reservation in the past couple of years (different airlines each time), but that time was the worst. A recent trip we made airline reservations 6 months ahead of time and it changed a dozen times before the actual trip. All the changes were minor, but still made me worry. Now we check our flight info almost every day!!!

The big thing is to make sure you get to your Dive destination and your luggage arrives, too. Don't let the airline insanity ruin your vacation!

robin

 

[BDSC]

We have a trip to Bonaire coming up. We leave 2/21. So far we have received 3 notices that out flights have had some sort of change. So far it hasn't been a big deal but we only have an hour between our flight into Atlanta and then leaving there to go to Bonaire. I think we will be fine but when we first booked, we had 2 hours. It's like Robin said, they are all doing it.

 

[tedtim]

This type of stuff is the reason we book through a travel agent. We have been doing business with the same person for the last six years and it has really taken the hassle out of it when there were changes to flights.

We tried a couple of times to see if we could get a better deal on our own, but that is typically when problems have occured. My wife and I are headed to the Bahamas on Monday for a short reprieve from winter. One call later we had six options and were booked in just a couple of hours. She checks on changes and lets us know well in advance what is happening.

Well worth it IMHO.

Damn airlines.

 

[lmorin]

Take them to small claims court.