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beachmouse

A couple years back, I had a flight out of Atlanta where our original plane was declared MX about 15-20 minutes before our scheduled original departure. But this being ATL and late at night, the had spares available so the GA collected the people at the gate at that time and we followed her like ducklings following a mama duck two concourses over to a gate where the departure board was still showing our brand new 10:00pm-ish flight into VPS as the next morning's first flight into Biloxi.

So yeah, in a scramble to keep the flight itself on time, I can see a step being skipped in terms of push notifications and updates not happening quite in real time, especially if it's late enough in the process it's assumed everyone trying to get on the plane is already in the gate area.

Hipplewm

Maybe you should have paid for the "Hand Holding Service"

$150 is about $150 more than you should have gotten.

Watch the monitors in the airport - if you read the fine print in the app it clearly says it isn't reliable - use the monitors in the airport

FTA

Where does it say fliers are required to use their app?

rucksack

I think almost everyone here can sympathize with the frustration of missing a flight, especially when it's partially due to someone else's mistake. But I think that sympathy erodes when the OP refuses to accept any responsibility and seems to expect more than the already generous compensation offered.

I suspect the people here who say that it's absolutely fine to show up at the gate 15 minutes and 1 second prior to departure are often late or miss things. If you had an important meeting for work, would you plan to show up right on the dot? I'd hate to think of how many meetings I would have missed or been late to if I didn't plan for unexpected things like traffic, changes in location, etc. Someone told me once, "if you don't miss a flight every once in a while, you're spending too much time in airports." If you want to live your life that way, that's your prerogative, but don't be surprised when things don't go your way from time to time.

SamOF

I'm confused—why would there be a gate agent at the old gate at all at D-15:00 to make an announcement?

HDQDD

Davvidd

That's exactly what he did. He used the monitors in the airport that showed his gate and that's where he went to only to see that the Gate did have his flight number but there was no one at the gate as they have changed the gate without changing on the FIDS. My only issue is that 15 mins is not enough time but I do not think that even if he was there at 20 mins before he would have made his flight as per his statement the new Gate was on the other side.

HDQDD

SamOF

How would anyone verify that the flight monitors had the wrong information even if we had that info?

lupine

While expensive, my hearing aids do not do a great job of cutting through the ambient noise and lousy fidelity that characterize airport announcements. And, at best, the announcements can often only be heard in the vicinity of the gate where the announcement is being made. I frequently have to ask others in the gate area to repeat the gist of the message. Airlines make way too many assumptions about the ability of passengers to hear their announcements.

Getting to the published gate 15 minutes in advance is tight, but I'd still put most of the responsibility on Delta for not suitably posting a visual gate change announcement and pushing through a text message.

Tine Rod

ijgordon

I think it might be instructive to differentiate between the airport flight departures information screens (the ones that list ALL flights), and the monitor at the individual gate. It's not clear from the OP which of "the boards" still showed the old gate; I suspect he means the gate monitors. It's not clear whether he actually ever checked the flight departures screen upon arrival. That may well have shown the new gate, and helps explain why there weren't other passengers in the same boat (that we know of; surely if there were OP would have said so as it supports his case for the lack of notification).

Still, the old gate showing the flight still departing there and the SEEMING lack of a text message or push notification supports that enough of this situation is on DL to warrant some level of customer service gesture.

btonkid12345

I've never had DL wrongly communicate the most up to date gate info. That's why OP's story is hard to believe.

Plus, how did every other passenger get to the new gate? OP claims the old gate was deserted when he arrived - well DL regularly schedules tight connections in DTW so if DL really did post the wrong gate info, why weren't more passengers at the wrong gate?

Something here just doesn't add up.

gooselee

I suspect the announcement was made well before T-20 since the original gate was deserted and they would have had to get people to the new gate (which apparently was very far away) and then spend the usual 30 or so minutes actually boarding the flight. If OPs flight departed on time, I would guess the gate change happened closer to T-45 or T-50 at a minimum.

Also, I'm confused. Was it just the GIDS at the original gate showing the old flight info, or were the big list-of-all-flights monitors elsewhere in the concourse directing people to the old gate still? Despite what my BP or app tells me, I am constantly checking those big screens on the way to my gate at any airport. Since the original gate was completely deserted as OP suggests, it seems that other pax who were also not present for the verbal announcement found some other way to make it to the correct gate.