Giovanni

I recently sent a letter to Delta regarding a flight that I had purchased from their website. This flight had me connecting through ATL with 40 minutes between planes. I guess I should have known better, but 40 minutes of connection times is barely doable under the best of circumstances.

My flights were delayed by about 10 minutes in each direction, so naturally I missed my connecting flight - and spent 3 hours each way in Atlanta airport.

My letter to Delta suggested that they should not offer routings with such tight connections, or perhaps indicate to the customer that there is a substantial risk of missing a connection if you book this flight - and that Delta not attempt to sell a product that they can't really deliver on.

About a week later, I received a call from customer care. The customer care agent's message to me was that "Both of your flights were delayed due to ATC, so we can't compensate you for that"

I didn't really belabor the point, or try to engage the customer care representative to help her understand that my letter wasn't about compensation - but she refused to address the subject of my letter, saying that 40 minutes of connection time in Atlanta is perfectly adequate, and that if I didn't think so - I was free to book a ticket with a longer stopover in ATL.

I'm just baffled by the fact that Delta actually employs someone whose job it is to call customers that wrote letters, and argue with them that their grievances are not in fact valid.

In my letter, I explained that I travel this route EVERY WEEK, and that I frequently wind up booking Y tickets, because there isn't much competition in this market - and that I've subsequently rebooked all my future travel on USAir - but none of this really seemed to phase anyone at Delta.

Bottom line, I wish Delta the best of luck in their bankrupcy...