Originally Posted by
copwriter
Whenever I see countermeasures like this put into place, I think about the Israeli airline El Al, which has never been hijacked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_..._426_hijacking
Originally Posted by
copwriter
As for your suggestion that I get some experience as a baggage handler: I'm way too old and fat to do that. I freely admit that baggage handlers have a difficult and mostly thankless job. I was a cop for 15 years, so I can relate. I also know that, every time I made a mistake or someone perceived I had made a mistake, there was a complaint procedure that provided a detailed and meaningful response to the complainant, and serious consequences if I had in fact screwed up. Had Delta come back with something like, "A baggage handler got distracted and left a cart loaded with luggage on the ramp. Your bag and a bunch of others got left behind. We regret this, have counseled the baggage handler, and are watching him more closely to ensure this doesn't happen again," I would have been satisfied. Candor, accountability, and a sincere effort to improve service is expected and appreciated. Corporate boilerplate is not.
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Delta is obviously a huge airline that serves many people. This is a component of my beef with them. At some point, the organization becomes so large that it is inflexible and believes it no longer has to make any effort to meet its obligations. It's like the phone company meme in my OP: "We don't care. We don't have to." Delta can impose unreasonable policies without explanation, lose materials entrusted to them, and dismiss complaining customers with corporate boilerplate, while at the same time professing to provide excellence in customer service and care. As I said previously, had they simply admitted they had screwed up, I would have been more satisfied than with the non-explanation they did provide. I have to wonder what the response would have been had I had a face-to-face conversation about this, rather than an email exchange with someone who is apparently looking only to dismiss me, check a box, and move on to the next email.
An airline has to be big to be effective - bigger than any company could be and still provide the individual service you want. That's the only way a commercial airline can work and actually sustain its operations. To be blunt, if you want this kind of personal service you're wanting, you need to consider flying private or earning a PPL and then flying a general aviation aircraft wherever you need to go. As has been noted, DL is a large organization of over 80,000 employees and serves close to 200,000,000 passengers a year. DL serves most of them (us) pretty well most of the time, meets its obligations to us most of the time, and when it doesn't, provides reasonable compensation most of the time. You seem upset that DL isn't tailoring its policy around your specific scenario and making you whole exactly the way you think they should. This is certainly not cost effective for DL and wouldn't be cost effective for DL even if they were a tenth of the size they are and probably isn't even cost effective to your locally owned pizza joint down the road that serves a few dozen to a few hundred customers a day.
Originally Posted by
copwriter
Here's a hypothetical: During your outbound flight, your seatmate fumbles his drink, and spills the contents of his Bloody Mary down the front of your white dress shirt. You have a business meeting scheduled for an hour after your arrival at the airport, and it's important that you make a good impression. You think, "No big deal, I'll get a fresh shirt out of my bag and change in the airport rest room." However, when you get your bag, you find that Delta has placed a thick zip tie around it, so you can't get access to it. Delta refuses to remove the zip tie, and since you don't have a retired police badge, the airport police officer is reluctant to lend you his knife to cut off the zip tie. You have a choice of cancelling your meeting or going to it with a red stain down the front of your shirt. Is this still a triviality?
I'll counter your hypothetical and say don't put your firearm in a suitcase where you could need something out of immediately upon landing then. And who's bringing a firearm to their "important business meeting" where they need to make an impression at an hour after landing?