Misconnect; lesson learned.
 

On Sunday, was scheduled MKE-ATL-STL with ~50 min. layover. MKE-ATL leg was delayed over an hour due to mechanical. Once airborne, I got on gogo and checked Delta.com, which suggested I switch to an early flight the next morning. No biggie, did what they suggested.

On arrival in ATL, discovered that the ATL-STL flight was delayed, so I hopped over to that gate. Gate agent there told me that they couldn't put me back on the flight, as it was sold out and I had lost my seat by switching. Not a huge deal: called the PM line and they said to go to the gate agent for the MKE-ATL flight to get a hotel voucher.

That gate agent started flipping out and insisted they should have put me on the ATL-STL flight that I was originally on, and even after I told her not to worry about it (as long as they could get me a hotel), she ran off to find a redcoat. After a few minutes, she came hustling back and told me to get back to the ATL-STL gate, and they'd put me on. Sure enough, after someone (presumably the redcoat) called the gate, they open the door (!) and let me on.

So, great job to the DL people in ATL, but my question for the FT pundits: in a delay situation, is there a way to get a new flight online without losing the original flight, in case the connection does work? I know this can be done with the PM line people, but they're difficult to contact in the air.

While I have not done it, so I will let others chime in the details. But Delta can "protect" you by making sure you have a spot on the next flight while keeping your reserved seat on the original flight.

I've never been able to get this done online

Ask to be protected on a later flight, not confirmed on a later flight. If that can be done online for domestic or international itins at present, I don't know how it is done.

Yes, I have had a similar situation where I was "protected" on a later flight but kept a confirmed seat on the flight that I may miss. I don't believe that can be done on Delta.com though, so by changing your ticket inflight (which quite honestly, was a smart and proactive thing to do), it just took you off the original ATL-STL flight.

Depends what one means by "online". Here's where the Twitter folks come into play. They are "online" in that they are accessible via (paid) Gogo, but they are "manual" in that you don't have to point-click-and-ship yourself and can rely upon the non-mechanical judgment of a human.

I've had real live elite line agents resist protecting me on a later flight without canceling the original flight. I haven't heard this rule in a while, but at times they told me that they were not allowed to do this and I must pick just a single flight to hold.

Definitely a hang up, call back situation.

Knowing only the most rudimentary things about twitter, I'm curious how this works. To communicate your personal info to the twitter folks, don't you have to tweet it to them, i.e. the rest of the world could see it? Or is there some kind of private messaging component of twitter?

Unfortunately the automated dl.com system only will rebook/confirm on the next flight and cancel out the original segment(s). If an actual agent does it, then it can be done properly so you keep the original and get protected on the new flight just in case of situations like this where the flight you'd miss gets delayed and you can make it.

Some have reported having their flights cancelled when they just tried to explore rebooking options on delta.dumb.

Including, most frustratingly of all, award flights, which then can very easily become unrecoverable.

There is a private message component.

You have to "follow" @DLAssist. Then you ask them (publicly, via tweet) to "follow" you. {You should set up all of that ahead of time, so you're not scrambling later on}. After that, you are able to send them a direct message which is private. I usually start off with "Re PNR xxxxxx...." These people are wonderful.

Be careful about this, as it seems some things have changed since last year in regards to "protection". I was on the diamond line on Sunday night due to mechanical out of IND causing me to misconnect in ATL. I hung up and called back and was told the same thing by a different agent, but with some more detail.

She told me that Delta was having inventory problems because they had so many people "protected" on flights that they may or may not take, so they have ended that process. If you ask me, they're having inventory problems because they fly far too close to capacity during peak travel times and NOT because they were protecting frequent flyers from being stuck on missed connections, but I digress...

At the time, I was sitting on a plane with mechanical while weather moved into ATL and it wasn't clear that we would be taking off at all. Instead of "protecting" me on a flight from IND to ATL the next morning, she had to move me to that flight altogether. Since the flight that night was maybe 60% full and when we parked back at the gate, 75% of those people got off the plane, I felt rather secure in that they weren't going to come take me off the plane when it was finally ready to go. They didn't and I got to spend the night in ATL and standby for an earlier flight on Monday to my destination (all of which were oversold). However, I got messages about my Monday morning "flight" from IND to ATL and had to put in a missing mileage request today because I didn't get credit for taking the flight that I didn't get off.

Hopefully this is a YMMV situation and that the diamond line will be able to protect me in the future b/c as a segment flyer I do a lot of connecting...

I would worry that this strategy would cause you to lose your upgrade on the original flight.