us2

Given a choice, I'll take a Boeing over anything else out there. The 767, in particular, has an admirable safety record over the 30 years it's been in service. The 787 battery problems, the 777 diversion to Ascension and flight 66 may be skewing your perspectve on this.

MSPeconomist

Let's not forget that the A380 has had a number of incidents.

Dieuwer

I admit that the three you mentioned have been in the news a lot and happened in a short time span.

Wondering what will happen next week!

sethb

But most of those updates were lies. The plane was delayed umpteen different times; the delay was so it could be catered, only it wasn't.

GRALISTAIR

I would add even the ubiquitous Boeing 737 - what a brilliant aircraft.

DLFan2

$100 really is a slap in the face.

Doesn't DL have a multi-tiered compensation schedule based on how delayed your arrival is at the destination? Or is that something that doesn't apply to international flights, or even perhaps something that no longer exists?

A little more on the food issue...the A/C had food on board. Under normal arrival procedures, if anyone attempted to enter Canada with it, it would have been confiscated and disposed of. These passengers had not been admitted to Canada and had essentially been quarantined without the opportunity to expose the environment to the "dangerous" food from the plane. So why couldn't food from the plane have been used, and all leftovers and garbage been handled using standard airport arrival procedures?

Tim Horton's sells coffee and donuts. I don't pretend to know every 24 hour restaurant in Halifax, but I do know that there is a McDonald's in Goffs, NS not far from the airport, which is open 24 hours and from which "real" food could have been obtained.

Other than the safety issue (which admittedly is the most important by far), I think DL handled this poorly from the minute they landed at YHZ until they arrived in ZRH:

Poor communication.
Poor holding accommodation (couldn't additional chairs have been found or a larger space been commandeered?)
Lack of food.
Failure to cater the replacement A/C.
Woefully inadequate compensation.

knit-in

As I understand it, there was a replacement crew on the remainder of the flight.

TPAKyle

Many thanks to all for your feedback on the DL 66 experience. As background, I've been a Delta FF for over 25 years, about 100K shy of 2MM, and the reason I felt compelled to share my experience on this Flyertalk thread (I've been a silent lurker for many years) is my absolute disgust over the manner by which Delta handled this situation.

If you boil it all down, Delta used the provisioning delay as an excuse to circumvent their own Customer Commitment policy that states they will provide overnight accommodations in the event a "last flight" Delta-responsible delay exceeds 4 hours. The fact that they also broke their 3-minute passenger phone call commitment, is minor in comparison. Clearly, this was about dollars.

Today I got a lovely (bulk) e-mail form Jason Hausner, Director Customer Care, stating his apology for the delay incurred while the replacement flight was re-provisioned. He offered additional compensation of 7500 SkyPesos (one flight, two slaps). Of course, as described earlier, the replacement flight never received catering at all.

Frankly, I smell blood and you should too. We cannot allow our chosen airline to successfully implement this kind of operational policy.

AA_EXP09

Just a question-were you in BE from an opup, SWU use, paid J, or an award?
Anyway, $100 wouldn't be acceptable for Y, much less J.
Get them using relevant US regulations/EU261/2004.

AA_EXP09

DL IRROPS is usually good BUT this is an exception.
(I've flown them on cheap revenue tickets with a DM companion)

davetravels

Not to in any way minimize the grief you had to put up with - - NO QUESTION that the circumstances were barely humane, however, after reading the posts here, I'm not entirely convinced that DL is really at fault for much of it.

If the Canadian authorities had this quarrantine-like setup arranged, I really don't know if DL could've done much.

I believe the "last flight" hotel thing you speak of, and 3 minute phone call, relate to delays at your departure airport - - not in the event of an unforseen mechanical diversion, where every situation would be different, requiring location-specific arrangements, and in this case, particularly, because it was on foreign soil. It's impossible to really plan for that. Plus, again, if Canadian Customs wouldn't let the pax out - you're stuck!

As to the lack of catering of the backup flight - - the only thing I can think of for that, is that the food company doesn't prepare meals at that hour - - but it DOES seem as though something could have been provided, given the circumstances, particularly since there was no food for all of those hours at the airport. You'd think at JFK, of all airports, there'd be SOME type of catering available from SOMEWHERE, even in the middle of the nite!

The compensation - - I feel certain that when all is said and done, you'll get more - after it's all sorted out. You may hafto escalate up the customer service food chain.

Sabai

DL is a multi-billion dollar "big global airline" corporation. They have the wherewithal to get provisions to passengers who were "quarantined" in Halifax - they weren't in Burkino Faso for Chrissakes. All it would have taken is for someone at Delta to give a crap.

How nice that the aircrew were whisked off to a hotel and the passengers were left to fend for themselves.

"We've got your back" unless it proves difficult or inconvenient.

tajd12

+1 ^
Delta, being an airline carrier, not only should have the planning in place for these types of incidents, which aren't *that* rare, but they also have the people with the logistical knowledge to get goods and planes from one place to another. Since the pilot/crew were able to be processed by immigration and leave, it just seems that Delta didn't want to go through the hassle of busing and housing the passengers until the replacement could be figured out.

Tim Hortons replacing Michelle Bernstein as signature chef for this flight is somewhat amusing, but someone calling these shots at DL has their priorities messed up and they deserve bad press for this.

Kids, elderly, and those with special needs all fly. Not feeding them for hours is a bad call and could lead to a health incident which is totally avoidable.

njf1003

For the replacement 777 they sent to ASI someone to Kroger for food. Why couldn't someone run to the grocery store and grab at least something even if they couldn't get full catering. They should have at least found the premade sandwiches or BOB stuff to give away.

N639DL

Right, that was not posted on this thread at the time when I made that assumption.