jfulcher

I got a whopping $50 for a 9 hour flight from DTW-ATL a couple weeks ago. First the delay was weather related as we were diverted to Knoxville, but we had 2 mechanicals on the ground in Knoxville along with an aborted takeoff.

They broke the bank on that one considering we had no food for 9 hours on that flight. Where is our PAX bill of rights?

jbatl

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320))

On a flight to SVO?? Does Russia have pre-departure passport control at JFK? I'm pretty sure this is not the issue. Maybe the passengers went through some supplemental security screening before boarding. If that's the case, then they'd have to be rescreened. Customs and immigration wouldn't be a concern.

waltinsocal

I agree with the general comments for a passenger's Bill of Rights. I, too have elderly parents and can't comprehend trapping people on board for 4.5 hours before what is already going to be a lengthy flight to SVO. Delta just didn't want to go to the effort of doing the right thing for the passengers. As a side note, in addition to asking for compensation, I would also write my Congressman/Congresswoman, with a copy to Delta. The only way these actions will ever stop is for our representatives to receive notice of their occurrences. Compare this with what KLM did for my flight last November. We were at the gate at LAX awaiting our departure for Amsterdam. Something happened and the cargo door would not close. After being on the plane at the gate for about 90 minutes, the Captain announced that it would be another 2 or so hours before the door was fixed. KLM not only offloaded the plane, but it gave us meal vouchers, and on the spot offered each pax the choice of a $50 cert. toward future travel or 2,000 miles. KLM handled it in a totally classy way.

DLPhoenix

Customs and immigration are an issue. Visitors that handed their I94s to the airline when they boarded are free to walk out of the departure area back to the street if they are let of the plane.
This is a lame beurocratic excuse, but it turnes any atempt to deplane passengers after boarding an international flight into an administrative nightmare.
And IMHO DL should have made the effort and let them deplane.

DLP

RobertS975

Gate space is at a huge premium at JFK, otherwise they would have likely pulled up to a gate even if the pax were not disembarked. Look, the alternative was to simply cancel the flight (and screw all the pax waiting for the next day's flight back to the USA), and have everyone who wished to get their the next day travel via CDG or some such similar nightmare.

Sometimes, there is no great solution, just a solution that is less disagreeable than some of the alternatives. In the end, sitting the four plus hours was a better answer than returning to a gate, processing whatever the Federal officials needed for non-US residents, trying to rebook everyone, trying to arrange hotels and vouchers for a canceled flight, as well as causing issues with everyone's non-refundable Russian plans (hotels, connections etc.).

That said, a politely written letter will probably get you a $100 travel voucher in each of their names.

waltinsocal

I can't disagree with your comments concerning the mess that a flight cancellation would have caused, but I think I am missing something concerning the immigration/customs issue. A couple of posts above I related my experience on the KLM flight. My ticket was LAX-IST, with a change of planes in AMS. There is no way that there weren't non-American citizens on that flight with me. Why was KLM able to easily let us off the plane and then reboard us later when the cargo door was fixed with no immigation/customs issues? (I am also not ignoring your comment about gate space, but I am trying to understand where immigration/customs comes in). Why would there be any such issues? It's not like this would have been an arriving international flight that would need a special gate for customs purposes and which would require pax to clear immigrations.

FlyingUnderTheRadar

I too fail to understand the logic of customs and immigration comments. This is an outbound flight. I have never had any documents collected going on board an international flight but I have never flown to Russia. The agents check documents when you checkin for the flight and and you go through TSA security with the rest of the masses.

The OP noted the flight returned to the gate so obviously gate space was not the problem.

More than likely the problem was the door is closed and they did not want the hassle of rechecking everyone.

GoSpurs

How does any of this explain why Delta doesn't have the basic human decency to give the folks something to drink and eat while they sit on an airplane for an easily predetermined length of time? This was just grossly poor judgement on the part of that station's management. It has nothing to do with gate availability or anything else. This situation sucked because Delta chose that as the way they would handle it.

I have had many great experiences on Delta through the years, but this is inexcusable. Telling them it could have been worse just isn't real credible.

StefanNYC

The issue at hand is visitors (i.e., non-US citizens who are also not permanent residents). Those have to surrender their I-94 forms, which is an indication that they left the country. As DLPhoenix remarked correctly, any of such passengers could, after being let off the plane, exit the airport and remain in the US while having left the country "on paper".

IIRC, the I-94s are collected at checkin and not at the gate -- thus, anyone wishing to deceive the authorities like this could try checking in for a flight and then walking right into the street -- but I imagine the fact that (s)he never boarded would be registered, with the obvious consequences. Here, in contrast, everyone had boarded, so they'd have to somehow undo that, as far as immigration is concerned.

Hence, there would be an issue, but almost certainly a solvable one.

waltinsocal

Thanks for that bit of info. But then I still don't understand how KLM, as I described several posts above, managed to offload my plane. I know there were several pax speaking Dutch and Turkish on my flight and they were probably not US citizens. As I said we all got off the plane and somehow KLM handled the situation. Thanks again.

WidgetHead

Last summer, I was on DL118 from JFK to CDG with scheduled departure at 5:40 PM. I boarded around 5:15, but because of thunderstorms in the area and the massive cluster$&!# that is DL at JFK, we couldn't push back from the gate until 6:30. Once we did, we taxiied out to runway 13R where they were lining airplanes up to shut down, and we did for about an hour. Then we re-started one engine, taxiied around the airport for another hour and a half and we finally took off around 10:30, about a 5 hour delay. About five days later, without any notice, I found a 20K deposit of skymiles in my account. At the time I was non-elite, so this was quite a surprise. I later received a letter in the mail apologizing for the "disruption of service" and informing me that all of the New York customers were affected adversely that night.

Long story short, write and see what you get. Even for non-elites, they might still give you some form of compensation.

Ah, JFK in the summertime...

avflyer

This type of thing is never pleasant and DL should have made an effort to cater something....although I imagine the vodka was flowing in the BE cabin.

FWIW, I am amazed that the crew didn't time out. That is one very long delay for one very long flight.

While there is no win here, the flight did depart and people got to their destination. Ask nicely and let us know what happens.

StefanNYC

Do you happen to remember the details of the deplaning/re-boarding procedure? Especially, did they rescan the boarding passes on re-boarding? (I would imagine they should, or they might be faced with another sort of issue...) If yes, then it was probably as simple as deplaning everyone and, at the same time, entering some command that resets the state of the computer from "boarding complete" to "boarding hasn't begun yet". You're now back to square one both physically (empty plane) and logically (no one has been registered as boarded), and ready to re-board.

waltinsocal

Yes, I remember the details explicitly. We were handed our meal vouchers, and a form which would enable us to chose $50 off another flight or take 2,000 miles. Every passenger was treated the same. No one was asked whether they were an American citizen or not. We left our personal items on the plane, simply left the plane, went and ate, and reboarded. We were reminded to take the same seat upon reboarding (like we wouldn't do that anyway). I honestly do not remember if KLM rescanned our boarding passes, but regardless, there was absolutely no immigration/customs issue. As I stated, we simply left the plane, ate, and returned later. I remember it well, because KLM treated us right, unlike some of the other stories we read about here.

YVR Cockroach

You could blame the U.S. CBP bureaucracy and/or DHS policy. As mentioned, the flight may have been considered international by the local bureaucracy so everyone would have to be cleared if the doors were repopened. FWIW, AC had a SYD-YVR (or v-yv) flight with a tech stop at HNL for a little while a few years ago. The stop was for refuelling only. The cabin doors could not be cracked open otherwise everyone would have to clear U.S. entry in HNL even if they had no intention of even deplaning.