Just wanted to share my experience today traveling CPH - JFK and hear if people think Delta was correct here.

Details: 3 seats booked in Delta biz on today's CPH - JFK flight. Woke up this morning in Copenhagen to texts/emails from Delta that flight was delayed from 2:20PM to 5:00PM. the text says nothing about getting to the airport for the original time, but the email does say: "If you're departing from an airport outside of the U.S. you must check in for your original departure time." It says nothing about baggage drop off times.

We check in online, no problem, receive electronic boarding passes.

We have some problems getting to the airport and do not arrive at the counter until about 3:50 PM. We had a large bag and a carseat to check. There is only one agent and only one other passenger there. Basically the agent said that the flight is "closed" and they cannot accept anymore baggage and we are too late. Me and the other passenger explain that we thought it was 60 minutes for a bag and can't they at least try. At some point another family shows up and they are in same position. Delta wont accept anyone's bags and says we cannot board. My wife and daughter print out physical passes at a kiosk and just go to the gate and I tell them ill get to JFK at some point. We continue to debate with the check in woman, who has now been joined by two other employees (I do not think they were delta staff but CPH staff). They are frantically making phone calls to I dont know where (something about a delta supervisor). They seemed to agree with us that it was ridiculous but that Delta was prohibiting us from checking our bags. Finally at about 4:25 PM they change their mind, take our bags and tell us to "run." We all made it on and I even got my bags so this was not a big deal.


But it was quite stressful and I did have to "run." I find it troubling that delta would tell me my flight was delayed, I check in and then get to the airport check in desk 60 minutes before flight and am basically told that they need the bag 60 minutes before ORIGINAL scheduled departure. At many times during the conversation they told us to give up and just call delta to be rebooked, so that did almost happen but we kept asking them to try something else, which fortunately the check in staff did. IF this is indeed the policy, that all bags must be checked in 60 minutes before original scheduled departure time, then 1) that is tremendously inconvenient and 2) it is not explained properly at all in my communications from Delta.

Part of checking in is dropping off luggage. While you can get your BP up to 24hrs early online, this is only one portion of checking in. Until a transporter is invented you'll have to complete checking in with bags at the airport.

What if they had been able to leave ontime? This is why you have to be fully checked in and ready to board at scheduled departure. Also outside the US most airport checkin is contract. They close at end of scheduled checkin and they may not even be there because they have to start on the next airlines flight handling.

My personal experience: Delta doesn't publish delayed flight times unless they are sure. I've never seen a DL flight which had a _published_ delay leave early. They do this exactly because of your situation -- people see the first delay message, then decide to arrive for the new departure time. Whenever I've arrived a bit later due to a published delay >1HR with a bag to check, there hasn't been a problem when I've arrived within about 20 minutes of when the 'normal' baggage window would close. Any more than that and it's a total crapshoot. When it comes to checking bags late, agents have done some very grey things for me (policy wise) only because of DM status. When I was GM and PM this stuff never used to happen, I would just get a polite no.

DL Policy: Written policy is that you need to be checked in and have your bags dropped at the time windows corresponding to the originally scheduled departure time. With a 3HR published delay yes this really sucks. But that's policy, so what the agents in CPH said was correct.

Glad they were able to work around it though to get your bags on.

Then they probably shouldn't announce a delay 24 hours ahead of the flight. Blaming the victim here is a terrible look.

Yeah, that's what the OP did. The updated schedule. There's no rule saying you have to do that for the ORIGINAL time.

Cool story but this was domestic. You're really trying hard to lick Delta's boots here and it's just sad.

Where was the domestic flight? Did you even read the OP?

OP was flying from Copenhagen (Denmark) to New York.

Flew SAN LAX AUS a couple of weeks ago. While on the hotel shuttle to SAN, we got a message stating our LAX-AUS was delayed 3 hours. However, when we got to SAN and checked in ~10 minutes later the flight was still on time. I even had numerous reroute options provided on on the DL app. We knew it was better to go to the airport and handle changes from that point.

Got to LAX? On time. In the end we arrived into AUS about 15 minutes early.

Yeah, I got that mixed up with another thread.

Plus the section about being checked in at airports outside US at original departure time seems to being skipped.

DL let him know it would probably be late. However in that very message it says if this is a flight from outside US to be checked in for scheduled, not delayed departure.

Sorry OP had an issue, but DL told him what to do and for a reason. For a once a day flight the people handling checkin are only scheduled to handle the checkin portion till the scheduled departure. They then need to start working other airlines flights.

This. I had a domestic routing once (IAH-SLC-SEA) where I got the alert that the flight leaving IAH was delayed by 2 hours. Instead of twiddling my thumbs for a couple hours at the airport I chose to dilly dally around and showed up a little less than 2 hours later than I normally have. Attempting to check my bag I'm informed I'm no longer ticketed with DL as they rebooked me on a earlier direct AS flight (IAH-SEA) which had already closed and had to press them to get my original booking reinstated.

These are different because DL. An substitute aircraft easily at major USA airports.

At CPH, DL only has one or two flights per day. If the inbound aircraft is delayed, there is no way that the outbound flight can leave on time, although IME it's wise to check the status of the inbound aircraft in such cases. Similarly if crew rest is the cause of the delay. However, if the problem is mechanical, there's always the chance that it will be fixed faster than anticipated.

I disagree that delta told me what to do. Delta told me to check in. I checked in online. We can sit here and debate whether dropping bags off is part of the check in. But it certainly is not clear from delta's communications. It is absurd to tell people the flight is late and to check in but fail to clarify that online check in is insufficient if you are checking bags. It is also a very inconvenient policy that forces already inconvenienced passengers to spend extra time at airports. Delta could easily arrange to have their desks properly staffed until actual departure, it would just cost money. Further, there was someone sataffing the desk, they just would not accept the bags.

Regarding the possibility of the delay being mitigated and the time being moved earlier: This is always possible but I was able to track the inbound flight and it seemed quite unlikely in CPH. In any event it is not really relevant. I am not asking delta to guarantee the flight leaves at 5pm. I am asking them to let me check my bags 70 minutes prior to the departure time. If they found a way to leave earlier, that is fine and I could miss the flight. But that is not what happened.

There is also this:

And this:
I don't mean to be pedantic, and indeed these are recomendations, and I suppose when one is flying J one may feel more entitled to last-minute bag drop. But that isn't a great idea, IMO. I have no way to be sure, but I suspect that if you had arrived at even 2:30, they probably would have taken your bags without a fuss.

As others have said, I've generally understood that contract out-stations are not required to be staffed after the scheduled cutoff time. I'm sorry you didn't know this, and I can understand there can be confusion. I recall some unsatisfying twitter private msgs with Delta a couple years ago when my international departure from my home airport had a known delay. IIRC they wouldn't commit to saying it was OK to report to the terminal late (of course equip swaps are more possible in that situation).

OP expects that personalized directed instructions from DL to OP contain relevant and actionable information. Seems to me OP's expectations are entirely reasonable. DL often falls short in this regard in my observations.

OP was unfortunate that check-in is not handled by DL but local outsource. If it was DL in US I'm pretty sure this will not be an issue, and even if they won't let you fly that flight they will put you on another one.

Now the far out destinations, the local ground staff will only be working to a certain time, maybe only the station manager is the only person working for DL. So unless you get a hold on him/her, don't expect the locals to do anything for you. You are lucky that someone was there. Often the check-on counter will have no one there.

OP wasn't wrong here, but I don't think DL will accept fault either. So play safe next time.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I agree the prudent thing is to get there earlier. But prudent is not what I'm interested in. In my opinion if delta is going to have this policy re checked luggage, their communications are woefully inadequate and misleading. The simple solution would be to fix this by explaining that there is no way to check bags at foreign airports past the original departure time in clear terms. That this is their policy is also unfortunate given the prevalence of delays. Seems like it would be easy to offer later check in for delayed flights. I'm not sure how other airlines handle that but am now interested to know.