slykens

I'd like to follow up here a bit on my experience with DL irops over the last few days. As I somewhat mentioned above, I originally booked SCE-DTW-AUS for the 1809 departure on Thursday. On Wednesday afternoon when it became clear wx was going to be a problem I contacted Medallion reservations and asked to be moved to the 0600 departure which would have avoided the weather entirely. The agent was helpful but did not have any inventory and because we are heading into a week of break with school here the flights were all full. (I note here in retrospect I should have asked for SDS with a fee waiver due to impending irops which I suspect would have been done no questions asked by her and likely would have worked out for me)

About 10p Wednesday night I saw Y inventory come open in ExpertFlyer so I called Medallion reservations back. This time the agent was trying to be accommodating but had to speak to "support" to issue the change. Support refused stating it was a voluntary change and a change fee was requested. This begins my getting hot with DL.

As you know from my snarky posts above, DL screwed the pooch and ended up cxl the 1809 departure. I called Medallion reservations and got a call back about 45 minutes later. This agent was not terribly helpful but there were also not very many good options. It was during this call that I asked if I could depart from PHL expecting that during irops most rules are out the window. I was again asked for a change fee! This compounded my frustration with DL.They seriously wanted to charge me $200 for the privilege of driving a few hours during the end of the storm. The agent offered several alternatives including a Sunday morning departure - quite helpful with my Sunday afternoon return. (Seriously!) Finally, somehow inventory from MDT opened up - it was not there at the start of the call - and we settled on a set of flights. It took a few minutes for me to get her to understand that if I was driving to MDT I needed to fly back into MDT to get my car - I was waiting for another request for a change fee. She ended up putting me on the wrong flights out of MDT but fortunately Twitter reps sorted that out quickly. It did take about an hour and ten minutes on the phone to get the alternative itinerary built - fifteen minutes of that contacting "support" again. (Why aren't these agents empowered to make changes on their own?)

At this point I am very disinclined to continue my relationship with DL. I feel like DL asked me for change fees and money at every turn in the road when those requests weren't necessary or appropriate. I feel like my loyalty to DL basically got me jack squat in return when I needed help from them - isn't that the point of being loyal? I have two more revenue tickets booked with DL which will get me gold - my present intent is to fly those then request UA to match the gold and move my flying there. But before I do that I would like some opinions are the appropriateness of DL's multiple requests for fees. Am I just unlucky that I got "poor" agents? Are all the requests really consistent with DL's irops policy? Fortunately, I do not own a dog or a guitar and since UA promises not to throw people off of planes any more I think I will be safe there.

I did write up my thoughts on the experience and sent it through the feedback email on the website. Of course I got a mostly canned response and an insulting (and useless) 5,000 point credit for it. What makes that more insulting is that I was "gifted" 15,000 points on my return from AUS - seriously, I was sitting in my exit row seat and the flight attendant asked me out of the blue if my seat reclined - it did not, I hadn't tried because I usually won't recline unless I'm really tired - everyone in the row got points as apparently the gentleman in the window on the opposite side of the plane had asked about the seat.

If you've made it all the way down here, thanks for reading.

manacit

IMO, this was a combination of you being unlucky that this storm was such a surprise, that you got some bad phone agents, and that you, perhaps, are "only" a silver.

My story started fairly similar to yours: I was booked AUS-JFK on Friday (16th) at 8 AM. I went to bed around 11 PM the night before, having checked that the inbound plane was delayed leaving DTW, but would arrive well in time for my flight the next morning (I believe this was DL 2311, arr. to AUS at 1 AM).

I woke up at around 5 AM briefly, looked at my phone, and noticed that they had outright cancelled my flight, and that I had been automatically rescheduled. Because it was 5 AM, and I wasn't thinking straight, I looked at the rebooking, noticed it said 10 AM, and went back to sleep, thinking I was rescheduled on something leaving a few hours later (despite knowing there was no 10 AM AUS-JFK, but being exhausted after a busy week and it being 5 AM).

Friday morning, I looked at my trip again and noticed that I had been rebooked AUS-MSP-JFK.. on the afternoon of the 17th (Saturday). Unacceptable, and I kicked myself for not noticing that at 5 AM.

I called the DM hotline, which had a 32 minute wait. I put myself in the queue to be called back and DMed @Delta on Twitter with the same problem, and then waited. Looking online, I didn't see anything obvious that was being sold, which was pretty concerning. There were options on other airlines, but given this was wx, I doubted that DL would be willing to rebook me on to UA or AA.

I waited about 32 minutes and someone called me back - this person was clearly knowledgable (I suspect I got someone that is normally to senior to be on the phones), who spent about 5 minutes looking around and told me I had one option for getting to the NYC metro area on Friday: AUS-ATL-HPN, arriving to HPN at around 8 PM with a 3 hr layover in ATL. To even do this, he'd had to force me into F for both legs, and no confirmed seat on AUS-ATL.

In the end, I flew AUS-ATL in C+ (not a middle!) and then ATL-HPN in F. I got my MQM bonus for both legs, and ultimately feel that DL's service recovery was great. I only wish there had been more (and earlier) communication about cancelling my flight from AUS in the first place, or issued a waiver so I could have had more flexibility beforehand.

slykens

Yes, "only" silver but my 8,000 MQDs are as green as anyone else's. I do understand I don't have a lot of "juice" with DL but I also don't think I was asking for anything outside of policy.

That being said, it seemed to me that interline was certainly an option as I discussed alternatives. That is to say that when I made a suggestion involving an AA or UA segment it was not dismissed out of hand - but the agent also did not see the same availability I saw in ExpertFlyer so perhaps the system was hiding those flights from her so she wouldn't have to know?

manacit

I agree that everything you were asking for was completely reasonable - there's no doubt that DL should have issued a waiver for Friday significantly earlier than they originally did, and the fact that they asked you for change fees is a bit insane given you were already in an IRROPS situation. It's too bad, really, that the wait was so long, because you can't easily hang up and call again.