Tag Archives: Airplanes

Delta Airlines: You Suck

I’ve got a bone to pick. It’s with Delta Airlines. I’ve put this off for way too long, almost two years now, almost no chance at receiving any restitution, but I figure what the hell, I’ve got a story to tell at least. It all started in 1984 when my mother gave birth to a beautiful little me.

OK, seriously, my wife and I were living in Ecuador, serving in the Peace Corps, and come time to end our service, the US government gave us the option of buying us a ticket back to New York or giving us some money and allowing us to shop for ourselves. “As long as it’s an American airline,” the government said, “and you have to pinky swear.”

We took the cash and booked a flight out of Guayaquil for a pretty reasonable price. Whatever. Airline tickets are a huge scam anyway. Did you know the price you find on the Internet all depends on where you’re searching from and what kind of operating system you use? (Yeah, it’s kind of an Internet rumor, but I’m presenting it as fact here, and look, here’s a link I found from some web site I’ve never heard of before substantiating my almost baseless claim.) We found a good deal from Delta and we went with it.

It was a really numb, emotionally taxing day and a half. There were too many thoughts and feelings to process. We sat there in the Guayaquil international terminal just ready to be away, back somewhere, somewhere not so in between, you know, that hollow feeling you only really get in an airport, that delayed sense of not going anywhere, not yet, but not really remembering having been anywhere else. Wow, I’m so deep.

Anyway, it would be stupid of me to sit here and write out all the ways that everybody already knows why they hate airplane travel, the lines, the waiting, the more lines, the security, the pat downs, the random screening, the taking your laptop out and putting it in a separate bin, the buying a bottle of water for six dollars right before security and then security telling you that, sorry, you can’t bring that bottle of water past the checkpoint, that you can spend another six dollars on the other side. Just, please, it’s so fucking annoying. I’m getting actually upset just imagining it enough to write about it.

And even on my best of flying experiences, you get to your terminal, finally, and the plane is never going to leave when it says it is. Boarding always takes way too long. Much longer than you’re expecting. And taxiing. And then sitting on the tarmac forever. And then finally taking off. That’s best-case.

When things go wrong though, they don’t tell you about it all at once. No, that would be too painless. Annoying, sure, but let’s see if we can’t take this situation and stretch it out past the limits of human suffering. OK, yeah, that’s a stretch. But it was a colorful sentence. I’m sure AIDS and cancer are much more of a cause of human suffering that a layover. But just indulge me.

They just keep you there in the terminal for a little bit longer. Maybe an hour. Maybe two. And then maybe they’ll actually start boarding, pretending like some sort of progress is being made. But then, no, OK, actually we’re all going to have to do a reverse boarding, and then what’s the problem exactly? But every passenger is asking that same question, “What’s the problem? When are we going to New York?” and so clearly those people aren’t satisfied with their answers, so why add to the chorus of discontent?

That’s what happened to us. We sat around, all afternoon, all night. Pretty soon the airport started to shut down. I didn’t even know airports closed. Deltas wouldn’t tell us anything. When the flight was going to leave. How long we were supposed to just sit there waiting. They made us feel even more like cattle, more even than the regular plane traveler does who hasn’t had a huge delay.

Other passengers weren’t as patient as we were. One lady had an actual rage fit that lead to convulsions and her being sent away in a wheel chair. At least she got to sit. We were on the cold tile floor. Delta promised to try to find us hotels. Mission not accomplished. Some buses arrived eventually, but lacking that killer instinct to push aside fellow human beings in the name of looking out for numero uno, the buses left full, us still trying to find a comfortably clean spot on that vast airport floor.

It’s a good thing we didn’t get on that bus. It turned out not to be a hotel, but a brothel. Honest mistake. There are lots of brothels in Ecuador. Could have happened to anyone. More yelling. More convulsions. More wheelchairs. Finally, just when a riot was all but certain to foment, Delta tells us that, sorry, the plane is broken. A new plane will be coming in from New York. Eventually. At some point in the future. Definitely not tonight.

They never got us hotels. I literally spent the night squirming on the floor, falling asleep every ten minutes but waking up ten minutes later, some arm or leg deprived of circulation, screaming pins and needles for some blood. It was one of the worst nights ever. You ever pull an all nighter? You know how, when you wake up in the morning after a good night’s sleep, your breath is terrible, you need to brush your teeth? But without sleep, it’s worse, you can kind of feel it coming on gradually, the bad taste, the grime accumulating on your molars.

Understanding of our discomfort, Delta promised us four hundred dollars each in compensation. That was really nice of them. I’d endure a night of suffering for four hundred dollars, totally. And so everything looked like it would work out. We got on a flight the next day and eventually made it back to the States, where I resumed my ambitious career waiting tables and started this blog where I write a bunch of nonsense every day.

Oh yeah, but that four hundred dollars? What Delta secretly meant was, “We’re going to tell you four hundred each, to shut you up for the night, but when you get back to the US, it’s actually going to turn into one hundred each. And it’s not going to be real money, it’s going to be Delta Dollars,” or whatever stupid bullshit name some brilliant marketing whiz came up with to label its “store credit only” policy.

Sorry! And your compensation for the shittiest flying experience ever is … even more bullshit, but only a fraction of the bullshit that we promised. Fuck you Delta. I wrote email after email, vowing to myself and to the Internet that I would not accept the one hundred dollar voucher, that I was promised four hundred dollars by several Delta employees and that I had better get four hundred dollars. But nothing. This went on for months.

Finally I had to fly somewhere and I clenched my teeth, swallowed hard, and cashed in my one hundred dollar bonus. But that’s it. Delta, you have lost a customer for life. The next time I have to fly, anywhere, and you guys pop up as the cheapest option, I’m going to pay more, I’ll pay that extra hundred, two hundred, three hundred dollars, just to give myself the satisfaction of knowing that I’ll never give you so much as another cent ever in my life. I have never wished the demise of a company more than I hope you guys go belly up out of business. You are everything that’s wrong with America, its bloat, its arrogance.

We went back to Ecuador last summer. There was a problem with the return flight. But LAN Ecuador, our carrier for that trip, immediately put us up for the night in a really nice hotel, they paid us something like four hundred dollars each, cash, they gave us food, they said sorry, they valued our business, and they meant it.

I’ve made a big to-do about getting to my point here, but it’s this: Delta, you are the worst airline in the history of aviation, of transportation. I hate you. I’d rather have flown TWA Flight 800. I’ll never fly you again. I promise.

Airport adventures

I was flying back from vacation a couple of weeks ago. When I got to the airport, the airline offered me a couple hundred dollars to give up my seat to someone else. My eyes immediately rolled to the back of my head, my pupils replaced by dollar signs. OK, that didn’t really happen, but I definitely heard a “ch-ching” old-fashioned cash register machine sound. I hear it in my head. Yeah, I accepted.

I had to wait around a little longer, going backwards through security, having immigration unstamp my pass. Some random foreign country version of a TSA guy handed me a half-filled bottle of water, almost like the one they took away from me when I was going through, but I’m positive it was a different brand. Whatever, it was a nice gesture. Or a cruel joke. I was really thirsty, actually. They don’t let you bring water on the flight. Your mouth gets super dry from being in the airport and then breathing in the recirculated recycled air on the plane while you wait for the plane to take off, and then the flight attendant finally gets to you, and you want water so bad, but they just give you a tiny little plastic cup and then they disappear, no way to get any more, and so it’ll be just a huge tease, a momentary reprieve from your insatiable thirst, but not enough to really get some actual moisture back into your mouth, your nose, your sinuses, and besides, you always forget that international flights give out booze, and you go for that shot of whiskey, and if feels great for a minute or two, but even this slight buzz is a tease, because there’s more where that came from, but they’re drinking it all in first class. And now you’re really thirsty, and your mouth just tastes gross.

I waited some more and this awesome airline gave me straight up cash, terrific, a bonus, a nice little after-the-fact vacation discount, and they put me up in a ridiculously nice hotel. When the cab dropped me off, also comped, it was close to one in the morning. The front desk guy told me how sorry he was, that the kitchen was closed, that he could have somebody send up some sandwiches and fries and soda, and I’m just like, what? I didn’t order any food. And then I take a look at the hotel voucher and it said, “all meals included.” It was just getting better and better.

Even though I wasn’t hungry at all, and I was really tired, I felt bad saying no. Hotels this nice live to serve. I imagined me saying, “No thanks, I’m full, and tired,” to the front desk man, and he’d say back to me something like, “Very good, sir,” and I’d go up to my room, and he’d have to go to the kitchen to tell the chef, who started automatically making sandwiches as soon as I entered the hotel, who could’ve gone home when the kitchen closed like an hour ago, the desk guy has to tell him, “Sorry Chef. He’s not hungry.” And the chef looks down at his half-constructed meal and says, “Goddamn it all. What a waste. All for nothing,” as he throws everything in the trash and stomps out.

And the desk guy would be thinking something like, man, I wish I could have eaten that sandwich. But big hotels almost always prohibit this type of behavior, because they don’t want employees to get in the habit of constantly making “mistake” meals, and, oh well, if nobody’s going to eat it, I’ll take it. Why let a good meal go to waste? Why indeed. And the desk guy looks longingly at the trash, briefly considers going for it, it’s not even touching anything, and he’s starving, but this only lasts a second and he literally slaps himself out of it, storming out of the kitchen.

But as he heads back to his counter, who’s standing there but his boss. “What do you mean he wasn’t hungry?” the boss demands. “We aim to serve! Did you offer him something else? Complimentary robe? A discounted massage? Where is that pea-brained chef? Get him in here!” And the chef, who was almost at his car, gets called back inside and he and the desk guy spend the next forty-five minutes getting chewed out by the manager, a real crash course on customer service.

So I said yes to the sandwich. It was awesome. Definitely not just something thrown together. Melted cheese. Fresh lettuce. It was delicious. The fries were fresh-cut potatoes, not frozen. I can always tell the difference.

After a great breakfast, I made my way back to the airport, went and had my passport restamped, (“What is all of this unstamping and restamping business here?” said the customs official, not really interested in any response) gave the same half-bottle of somebody else’s water back to the same guy security guy who, I could tell just by the way he was looking at me was thinking to himself, touché. Damn it if I don’t like this guy’s style. And then I heard an announcement. It was the airline. They had overbooked my flight and were offering a couple hundred bucks to anyone willing to give up their seats.

And I thought to myself, I should totally do this. I should keep doing this. I should see how long I could keep this going. It’s already turning out to be more lucrative than my job back home, and I could spend more time writing stuff like this. But I can’t always find a good spot to charge my computer, so I’ll write it out by hand, like I’m doing right now, and then I’ll have to sit down and type it all out later, which I’m doing right now, which is mind-numbingly boring, and tedious, and a lot slower than you’d think, on account of my awful handwriting.

And then I thought, they can’t possibly keep putting me up at that five-star hotel every night. I get the first night, as a nice gesture or whatever, but that’s going to add up quick. Are they going to eventually make me stay in the airport? It would make it easier, like I wouldn’t have to keep entering and exiting and reentering security, stamping and unstamping, passing that bottle back and forth, which, I’m pretty sure that guy might have poisoned by now, just hoping I’ll take a sip in a moment of thirsty weakness.

And then I thought, that would be a great idea for a story, or a movie, about a foreigner who winds up living in an airplane terminal, having all sorts of wacky terminal adventures. I’d have to think of a clever name. But this thought only lasted for maybe five seconds. The idea was terrible. And plus, who would act in it? I’d have to find the biggest hack in Hollywood to sign up for a project so dumb.

I said, “no thanks” this time and got on the plane. Takeoff was delayed for like four hours due to unspecified technical difficulties, until finally they cancelled the flight. It took forever to get everyone off the plane, to get their luggage, rebook everyone’s flights. And nobody got any hundreds of dollars. Nobody except those people who gave up their seats before the flight got cancelled. I should’ve done that. I could’ve really gone for a sandwich right then, because I was on the plane forever, and there was no food or drink, and I was so hungry and really, really thirsty.