Originally Posted by
OFFlyer
The problem with DY long haul is that when it goes wrong (and it does quite a few times) it goes very wrong indeed. Sit in airports for days - on your own dime.
The fear of this is what kept me from trying DY for quite a while, but we decided to go for it this past trip because we have homes at both ends of a direct flight (CPH-MCO). So worst case scenario is we are stuck at one of them and perhaps delayed getting back to work which I found to be an acceptable risk. Luckily, our flights were on schedule.
Originally Posted by
OFFlyer
Would gladly make a detour via ORD to avoid DY. And it so happened that SK had a timing issue - but one simple call and not waiting and the issue was solved.
Are you SK EP? The multiple times I've been stuck in a connecting city in the middle of an itinerary were disastrous.
Once was SK in ORD - plane had a technical issue so we were delayed 24 hours and then pushed over to a horrific Swiss Airlines flight (two middle seats in a four-across row in the back of Y-) that delayed our arrival at final destination by about 36 hours in total after a four-hour layover in Zurich.
Could not reach anyone by phone, had to queue at the airport for the re-route and despite being ticketed in (paid) C, after having spent a couple of hours in the queue, just as we were next to be called to the counter for rescheduling, they decided to close the C queue to the delayed passengers so they could check-in the newly-arriving C passengers for the flight that day to ARN, telling us to go join the end of the Y- queue that was still at least 50 people long.
All of this was after having been shuttled to a hotel at 3 am with a breakfast voucher that didn't cover even a cup of coffee and piece of toast, and told that shuttles would collect us by 9 am because they wanted us at the ticket counter for rescheduling by 11 am.
When everyone arrived at the airport, there were no SK staff there to start the rescheduling process and we were advised they didn't come to work until 1 pm. We asked why we were directed to be at the airport so early and were told "because we thought that would be best."
I actually like flying SK, and think their Business and Economy Extra products in the air are very nice. I've found most of their flight crew to be quite pleasant.
But I hate connecting in EWR, ORD or IAD and I have found the ground staff for SK in the U.S. to be quite unpleasant on more than one occasion.