Hi,

My itinerary was SAN-ATL-EWR and the first flight was delayed 7.5 hours due to a mechanical problem. This caused me to miss my connection and forced an 'overnight' stay in ATL. I put that in quotations because we got into ATL around 4:15.

After waiting on the plane for 3 hours, I waited in a line to talk to one of 2 GAs for an hour. There the GA rebooked my connection to a 7:09am departure, gave me a $7 meal voucher, and told me that I would receive a hotel voucher upon arrival in ATL.

I got into ATL with less than 3 hours before my connection, and we came out in Concourse A. I was interested still, at this point, in receiving a hotel voucher. It would have been nice to catch an hour or two of sleep. However, I saw the line at the gate where we came out - longer than the line in SAN, and moving slower because there was only 1 GA there.

I didn't want to wait in line for an hour to go to a hotel for a half hour nap, so I tried to find a second GA. I called SMS to ask where I could find a GA, after telling them I was at the empty help desk in Concourse A. SMS put me on hold and I walked to Concourse T, finding its help desk also empty. Then SMS told me there were help desks in Concourses A and T.

I found an off-duty GA in ATL who kindly checked me in and printed my boarding pass for me (I'm not sure why this wasn't done in SAN), but I didn't want to press him about my options since he wasn't on the job. If I had been able to talk to an on-duty GA, I would have liked to have been put on a later flight out of ATL. That would have let me go to my free hotel and get a few hours of sleep rather than a few minutes.


Anyway, wah wah wah, how much should I ask for from Delta for this, and how much are they obligated to give me?

As a side note, seeing Zone 2 board on the ATL-EWR flight, which was >80% medallions made me laugh pretty hard.