Quote:
Originally Posted by ohcbird
If you fly in the southeast, in the afternoon, you should NEVER schedule layovers less than 1 hour. If you do, you're are asking for a weather delay, or a missed connection.
Delta has an official policy of 'No hotels for domestic passengers that miss a connection'. In order to get anything from them, you need to be willing to push the issue. This happened to me in Dulles. The Delta terminal was closing after we were supposed to depart, so you can guess how motivated theywere to help us. Since they closed the gate 3 minutes early (we walked up 3 mins before the scheduled departure time), there were 6 of us that got screwed. I then had to drive 5.5 hours one night in order to make a mandatory 7am meeting the next morning.
This is EXACTLY why they are going to need another federal bailout...customer service in the US has gone to absolute ****.
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Well....not to be rude but if you walk up to the gate 3 min before the flight is supposed to push, that's what you get. The crew needs about 10 minutes to punch in all that last minute data and review the final paper work. So to leave on time (I know what you're thinking) the agent needs to close out the final paper work 10 minutes before push time. Nothing worse than things constantly changing when you're trying to get going and having delay after delay. As a pilot I have always wished passengers had a better idea of what it took to get the job done and all that can delay a flight. My biggest pet peeve is those passengers that are sitting in the bar and then rush to the gate at the last second. it's not like catching a bus.
I will agree with you on the customer service part. Seems that most agents these days are nasty and indifferent when it comes to doing their best to make a customer happy. While still in flight school I worked for DL doing just that and I am very critical of gate agents because of it. If you ran up to my gate 3 min before departure and I could get you on I would, but not without telling you how lucky you where. If you missed a connection due to a late arriving inbound flight I would do everything I could to assist you in reaching your destination, even if that meant putting you on another airline to get there. Now if you missed your connection because of your own actions....hey that's your fault, not the airlines.
Not trying to give you a hard time here. Just keep in mind that it's a big wheel and it takes a lot to turn it.
