Agreed. I also liked Richard. Except when he complained about ME3.:D

I've been using Delta as my primary airline for less than a year, but so far I've flown about 60 segments, TPAC, TATL, TCON, South America, mainline, regional, First, D1, Economy, C+, in pretty much every combo imaginable. I'm thoroughly impressed by the front line Delta staff, and as an ex UA MM (well I guess I'm technically still one) I can state with authority that the service I get on Delta overall is far superior to UA today.

There is nothing to suck up.

That is simple COC stuff. Section 240(b) provides DL's contractual commitment to refund to the original form of payment, all unused segments of a ticket when a flight is cancelled or delayed by 90+ minutes.

If all you want is a refund, just make that request. If you had not started the first segment, calculating the refund is easy as it is the total value of the ticket, including all ancillary fees paid. Once segments have been flown, it becomes a tougher calculation.

This is another reason why seats disasppeared on other carriers so quickly as people booked by higher end corporate TA's simply had themselves rebooked (or corporate TA's acted quickly themselves once they realized what was up) and grabbed inventory on other carriers to get their people back to base camp, allowing refunds to sort out the mess later. All a larger mess because DL/AA no longer interline, leaving UA as the only viable domestic interline alternative.

Why are people being so resistant towards DL giving more than $200? Honestly, $200 is a joke. I would think that DL would be much more willing to give more $ to those people who ask for it, especially given the hell they were through all week? :confused:

I'm still trying to figure out if the automatic $200 is per flight reservation, per flight segment, or per disruption.

I had one reservation affected. It was a round-trip with two segments, and both were affected. The second segment was affected twice, as I had two cancellations. So for me it was "Day 1, 4 hours delayed", "Day 2, canceled flight", "Day 3, rebooked flight canceled again."

Will they give me $600 in vouchers? $400? $200? I haven't seen email yet and they definitely have my email address, I'm in Skymiles. I'll try to push for $600. Honestly, they should probably pay my hotel after they canceled my flight on day 2 and the next available flight was on day 3, but I had no idea who to talk to about that so I just booked a room and will expense it to the work contract.

They have DL's top management's heartfelt apology. What else could they possibly want?

That is exactly what I did, got cancel notice Tuesday evening for my 5:55AM Wednesday flight, immediately booked a one way United ticket and cancelled the Delta flight.

I usually don't fly to bigger hub cities so I'd have to fly through Dallas, Charlotte or Houston anyway instead of Atlanta or Detroit. I'll stay with the airline I know. And Delta in MIA is so much easier to use than AA in all ways -- parking, one terminal, less crowded TSA lines.

Today's updated PR message says again that the "travel waiver has been extended." But it hasn't; as of now it's still only effective through today. No change from the last time they said it was extended.

To DL's credit, when I called yesterday afternoon I was only on hold maybe 90 seconds before a rep answered ^ (and cheerfully told me that my flight on the 12th showed as on-time and no, they could not make an exception to the scope of the waiver :p).

...Aaaand the latest update just posted now declares operations as having returned "to normal" today. Hope that's true for the sake of everyone who's suffered this week (pax and employees).

It's close to normal, but not quite. Still more delays than normal, and some residual cancellations. Also there were some overnight "delays" due to storms at MSP last night. About a handful of these were diversions that never officially cancelled and are finally getting to MSP today.

I agree. I got a Porsche ride in SEA on Tuesday morning and the driver and I were talking about the failure and he mentioned that he's never seen a DR drill like they did when he was in the military.

After seeing what happened to the other airlines over the past few years, they should have been less unprepared for this.

I breeze through security at MIA with Delta too. MIA based DL flyer and hate flying with AA

I got two $200 emails from Delta, one on Aug 8 and one on Aug 9. Not sure if it is a glitch or if I'll really see two vouchers show up in my account in "7 to 10 business days" but I'll be looking.

I did have one long delay that turned into a cancellation and another long delay where I finally just asked for a room and moved to a flight the next afternoon.

Fascinating to read the wide range of experiences people had. For what it's worth...my wife flew Delta on Monday, changing planes in SLC, and was absolutely blown away by Delta's customer service during their IT meltdown. She has no status with Delta but all customers were given royal treatment.

Her connecting flight from SLC to DEN was cancelled; she was quickly rebooked on a flight scheduled to depart 3 hours later. That flight was delayed another 5 hours waiting for a crew. In the course of those 8 hours the gate area was constantly served with free food and drink by Delta. First there were sandwiches, chips, and waters. Then all were given $15 meal vouchers. Then a barrage of snacks were brought in with waters, resupplied often. Then 20 pizzas arrived with 5 different varieties. There was so much food and drink that leftovers were abundant. In addition, she said the frequent flight updates were helpful and accurate as all the Delta staff tried to make the best of a bad situation. She saw no customers "losing it;" in fact, when the flight crew finally arrived, they were greeting with an ovation by the waiting travelers!

For her, the $200 voucher was a wonderful addition to the excellent customer service. And no, we do not work for Delta nor do we work anywhere in the travel industry.