Kristabella: Full of Snark Since 1977

Posted By Kristabella on October 6, 2010

In case you haven’t heard, Delta sucks. Do not fly Delta. If you do, mark my words, you will regret it.

Actually, that’s probably a little hasty. I have had two successful trips on Delta in the last 12 months. Once to Atlanta last December and then to NYC in August to BlogHer. My August experience wasn’t perfect, but that was mostly because I was one of the first flights out of the day and I don’t think the people working the check-in counter had had their coffee yet.

(And I will say, fly Delta Shuttle to LaGuardia because they are in this small little terminal and it is just them and you’ll be in and out so fast you’ll forget you’re flying into New York City.)

Anyway, as I mentioned in my previous post, I spent the weekend in Minnesota. It was kind of last minute. My friend Lori from Arizona sent me an email about a month ago and was like “I’m going to be in MN and Mike (her hubby) is going to come up for the weekend with me and you should totally fly up to meet us because MN is a lot closer to Chicago than AZ!” And I was like “FUCK YEAH! I’m so there!”

So the thing is, I’m out of vacation time for the year. Because I was poop sick and had to use all my sick days and two vacation days to stay home and pretty much be chained to my toilet. You’re welcome co-workers! I stayed home and didn’t give you c diff! It’s highly contagious! I should get a free vacation day because I’m SO NICE!

Since I had no vacation time, the plan was to go up there Friday after work and come back Sunday evening, since it is such a short flight. Since I work near O’Hare, it is easiest to fly out of there at a reasonable time and not miss any work. It was a perfect plan!

But then I remembered that O’Hare is a nightmare on a Tuesday afternoon. On a Friday evening, it was going to be insane. So before I left the office on Friday I said to my cubemate “wish me good travel mojo! I don’t have time for delays this weekend!”

Dear self, NEVER SAY THAT AGAIN. EVER.

So I got to the airport. The security line was a little long, but I had plenty of time. I stopped to get some apple juice (my go-to airport drink) and went to chill at my gate. My flight was supposed to leave at 6:10. As soon as I sat down, they announced there was a slight delay due to some mechanical issue. Slight delay became a longer delay. Longer delay became cancellation. CANCELLATION! And while, yes, I’m glad they canceled it, rather than put us up in the air in a broken plane, I was still very mad about the cancellation!

The gate agents were very helpful. They worked to get everyone on another flight that night. I got put on a United flight that was leaving at 8:10. So I was only going to be 2 hours delayed. But it killed all the plans I had for seeing some of my friends that evening. But all was not lost, since I was going to get there! And on Friday night!

The trip was awesome. I had such a great time with my friends. We can just sit around and do nothing and we can have a good time. I got to see the Twins new OUTDOOR ballpark, meet new babies, see another toddler that is no longer a baby and is now my BFF because I’m the crazy adult who will tickle you and act like a kid!

Sunday was a nice relaxing day. My friend Julie and I had a great brunch, went shopping and got our nails done. On the way to the nail salon, I got like three missed calls on my phone from some 800 number. I ignored it because I don’t answer calls from people I don’t know (or people I don’t like). After the third missed call, I called the number to see who it was. It was Delta. I knew it couldn’t be good.

So I immediately checked my email. My 5:15 flight had been canceled. CANCELED. AGAIN! And they had so kindly re-booked me on a flight on Monday morning at 9 AM. That went through CLEVELAND. It got me back to Chicago in more time than it would have taken me to drive. Clearly this was unacceptable. And I called Delta and told them just this.

The woman on the phone was very nice. She said she could confirm me on the last seat on the last flight of the night at 9:30. I said “I’ll take it!” because I needed to be at work Monday morning.

I spent the afternoon on Julie’s couch, watching football, drinking a beer and writing blog posts. I even caught about 45 minutes of the Bears debacle before leaving for the airport.

I got to the airport in plenty of time. I went and sat at my gate and found a plug to charge my phone. I was ready to be in the air at 9:30.

Oh silly me, I should have known better by now! Our flight was delayed! Because we had no crew! They were on a flight to Minneapolis from Philadelphia! So we would leave once they finally got there. Which they were hoping was soon!

Soon is a relative term in the airline industry. Because I think 30 minutes is soon. They think “still today” is soon. The crew finally got there a little after 10 and we finally boarded and took off a little before 11. Which means we landed at almost midnight. Only 2 hours later than we would have gotten in.

I got home about 12:45. Because I had to take a cab. My car was at the work parking garage, close to the airport, but I didn’t know if I could get in and out of there after midnight, so I didn’t even want to risk it. I wanted to get home and pass out from exhaustion, preferably still in my clothes. Because changing would have been too much work.

Throughout all of this, I made sure to let Delta know my feelings about them on Twitter.

Delta is very responsive on Twitter. But as I’ve found in my multiple dealing with them, their response is always “sorry, let me know if there is anything I can assist you with.”

And unless you can assist me with your airline not fucking sucking, then stop wasting my time.

Thus ends your PSA for the day. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Categories: A Day in the Life of Me, Rants & Rants, Travel
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