Originally Posted by hnewman (Post 27050700)

My Tuesday AM flight MSP-DCA at 7AM was canceled and rebooked on 10:30AM flight so I jumped on 8:50 AM flight MSP-IAD today my 14:40 DCA-MSP flight was canceled and rebooked getting home at 7PM. Changed to DCA-CVG-MSP and when I just got up found 20K pesos in my account. Thanks DL

Originally Posted by RoadWarrior707 (Post 27050651)

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.

Originally Posted by AANYC1981 (Post 27050832)

can someone remind how to tell where my inbound plane is coming from on the App? I know it was posted in this thread.....appreciate it!

Originally Posted by MSPeconomist (Post 27048111)

Do people working in RM know how to answer phones and book tickets?

Originally Posted by zedthedeadpoet (Post 27050842)

I got 20k "medallion appreciation miles" today as well...

Originally Posted by sleuth (Post 27050869)

I suspect RM probably has people who used to work in RES and know AXIS and/or DLTERM. I think a more plausible scenario would be sending them to the airport to help in the lobby, direct traffic, scan boarding passes while the actual gate agent works the computer, etc...

RM people hired off the street that never worked RES working the RES phones and rebooking people? No chance....

Originally Posted by zedthedeadpoet (Post 27050842)

I got 20k "medallion appreciation miles" today as well...

Originally Posted by MSP_Dave (Post 27048946)

DL, like any other airline, issues vouchers based on the assumption that a certain % will never be redeemed; thus, they don't lose a penny in revenue as a result.



I doubt DL will simply just "toss more their way" to those who want more. If someone can articulate missed meetings, etc., they'll have a better chance, but your average Joe Traveler doesn't have a chance in hell of getting more than $200.

I met up with some of my co-workers last night, and I got some additional information as to what happened. Of course, it's not the whole story, because if what they and the public are being told was true, this situation would have been resolved within 48 hours at the absolute max.

As we've been told, a piece of electrical equipment (some kind of electrical switch-over device) failed. What I got last night - That failure caused a power spike in whatever data center it happened in, which ended up frying at least one bank of UPS batteries (they were smoking, that's how badly they were fried). Then, on top of that, the diesel generators for the building.... you guessed it!!... were under-powered for the electrical load in the data center, so not all of the servers were able to continue running. That's where I believe the "some systems failed over, others didn't" line from DL came from. But in my book that really doesn't explain the on-going delays and cancellations. Get your $*** together and implement the failover/DR plans for whatever systems are causing the problems.

To me, this is sounding more like a failure of Delta management for NOT having sufficient DR plans in place, including ensuring that the diesel generators were sufficient for the current and future data center electrical load, and, more importantly, NOT having tested said DR plans.

Originally Posted by BenA (Post 27050982)

Makes sense. I suspect that a big part of the RM job is working with the booking system to analyze loads and such, so it's not a huge leap to hand any folks who know the system the phone scripts for IROPS rebooking and have them act as a first line of defense. I doubt anyone unfamiliar with the system is being conscripted, though.

Don't underestimate how desperate times can call for desperate measures and how white collar workers with minimal training can get thrust into customer service duty. Using an example I'm personally familiar with, in the early 2000s when the widespread SQL Slammer worm hit, Microsoft routed support calls to core engineering teams to cope with the load after only the most cursory training process. Again, there, those engineers had no familiarity with the procedures and practices of phone support, but at least had enough technical knowledge to assist users with recovering from the problem at hand.