Art at ISP
2010-08-05, 06:22 PM
After a service interruption handled very well by DL last week (and I let them know how well it was handled--someone in Consumer Affairs CALLED me within 3 hours of my email), I had another experience on Wednesday night which you'd need to see to believe.....
Good meetings in Atlanta, back to the airport early, nice cocktail in the Sky Club near A18-flight planned to leave for Miami from A17....so I think all is well.
Get to A17 6:30...around 10 min later, they announce the airplane is going mechanical. Eventually they send us to B31--ride 1 on the underground....
100 of us get to B31, the agent is overwhelmed and has NO CLUE what's happening....we then look at the video board and it shows DL1973 moved AGAIN to A6....ride 2 on the underground...
Get to A6, flight at the gate is held up to remove a bag (Intl departure positive bag match required)....ok inbound finally gets to the gate, we board a little while later, begin to taxi out--only an hour late .. not terrible....get almost to the runway, Captain comes on and says there's a problem with the APU, we have to go back to the gate.....so we do....B26......
Mechanics come on, they are working to fix the problem, about a half hour later, the pilots time out, but they announce they found new pilots to take the trip.....so we stay on board another half hour....THEN the flight attendants time out, and they work on getting us new cabin crew.......so now everyone off the airplane......ok....waiting for 2 more FA's, finally an hour later we board again....and FINALLY we're off to MIA......arriving at 1:30AM, or 4 plus hours late......I will say, except for the gate dancing, it was handled pretty well, and of course we got there, and they didn't cancel the flight....but it did look like a comedy of errors for a while--and a dispatcher/scheduler/agent's nightmare......
To top it all off, it took me an hour to get the rental car because Hertz' computers were down....but that's another story...
On a bright note I made a new friend on board...an attorney who can help JoAnn with her breast density disclosure law...but as I said you just had to be there...you couldn't make this one up.......
NO WAY complaining, I just thought the confluence of events was interesting....or as one of my friends calls it, Beth effect.....
Good meetings in Atlanta, back to the airport early, nice cocktail in the Sky Club near A18-flight planned to leave for Miami from A17....so I think all is well.
Get to A17 6:30...around 10 min later, they announce the airplane is going mechanical. Eventually they send us to B31--ride 1 on the underground....
100 of us get to B31, the agent is overwhelmed and has NO CLUE what's happening....we then look at the video board and it shows DL1973 moved AGAIN to A6....ride 2 on the underground...
Get to A6, flight at the gate is held up to remove a bag (Intl departure positive bag match required)....ok inbound finally gets to the gate, we board a little while later, begin to taxi out--only an hour late .. not terrible....get almost to the runway, Captain comes on and says there's a problem with the APU, we have to go back to the gate.....so we do....B26......
Mechanics come on, they are working to fix the problem, about a half hour later, the pilots time out, but they announce they found new pilots to take the trip.....so we stay on board another half hour....THEN the flight attendants time out, and they work on getting us new cabin crew.......so now everyone off the airplane......ok....waiting for 2 more FA's, finally an hour later we board again....and FINALLY we're off to MIA......arriving at 1:30AM, or 4 plus hours late......I will say, except for the gate dancing, it was handled pretty well, and of course we got there, and they didn't cancel the flight....but it did look like a comedy of errors for a while--and a dispatcher/scheduler/agent's nightmare......
To top it all off, it took me an hour to get the rental car because Hertz' computers were down....but that's another story...
On a bright note I made a new friend on board...an attorney who can help JoAnn with her breast density disclosure law...but as I said you just had to be there...you couldn't make this one up.......
NO WAY complaining, I just thought the confluence of events was interesting....or as one of my friends calls it, Beth effect.....