Originally Posted by
gypsycsc
Not a big deal, but something I was wondering about. Just had a mechanical delay that turned into several weather delays and was rerouted a few times. Delta gave me $15 meal vouchers (due to the original mechanical delay), but I didn't have time to use one in either Boise or LAX because of connection times. I would have loved to have used one onboard from LAX to MSP, but wasn't able to. Any ideas why that is? It would make sense to me to allow the passenger to use the meal voucher onboard for food at least, even if not for alcohol.
Because that's not the purpose of these vouchers. DL does not offer meal vouchers as a compensation, but rather to subsidize the cost of food at the airport (or hotel) during an extended (DL-induced) delay. If there's no time to use the vouchers, they shouldn't be issued (e.g. in your case, the agent in BOI should not have issued them but you could've requested them at MSP should a change in your itinerary resulted in an extended layover). And they expire within 24 hours to prevent passengers who've already eaten from pocketing them to use later. Of course, in practice, this is not always the case, although meal vouchers are not the preference - DL likes to use the 'have one on us' cart instead.
DL also pays face value. United actually puts a one-time use credit card number (including expiration and CVV) on their meal & hotel vouchers, so the merchant can redeem them same as cash.