Motionless queue at NW/DL checkin in PIT
 

If my experience is any indicator, then if you cannot check in online, you'd better get to the airport in plenty of time. Hopefully just an aberration. (Please pardon the excruciatingly boring details!...)

I was flying home yesterday - PIT-MSP-SAT. For some reason I could not check in online. I got the message "needs handling by an agent."

Yuck. Got to the airport ~ 12:30 for a 2 pm flight. The kiosk would not check me in either - it said I had a paper ticket. :confused: There were only 4 people in line to check in - so I got in line. (This is the new merged checkin counter.) About 10 minutes later, no one had moved, so I called the NW elite line.

The agent tried to help - had no idea why I got the paper ticket message. ("Who uses a paper ticket these days?" she asked!) She said my flight from yesterday had not been cleared off yesterday and that might be the situation. Told me to try the kiosk again.

Unfortunately that did not help. By this time there were 8 or 9 people in line. No one had still been called forward. (One agent was spending a lot of time with a single situation and everyone else was handing out bag tags.)

I resisted the temptation to cut back to my original spot in line. I call the NW elite line again and this time the agent checks with someone else and can find no reason why the error message. Only theory they ever came up with is that since my original flight was booked PIT-MSP-MEM-SAT and had been schedule changed to eliminate the MEM segment - that this messed up my ability to check in. (That certainly never was an issue in the good old days.)

By about 1:05 or so - the line had still not moved - I heard an agent tell someone to go get in the FIRST/MEDALLION line - at that point I realized the sign for FIRST/MEDALLION actually indicated to stand beyond the roped line - so I moved over there behind that customer - so now I am second in line. (No one had been standing by that sign for the previous 30 minutes - the roped line actually matched up with the FIRST/MEDALLION signs behind the counter - so it never crossed my mind to start a separate line.)

At that point, a young man (Scott??) comes up and logs on to his terminal - and asks that anyone trying to check in for NW flights come forward. (He was apparently the former NW employee now working at the DL counter.)

So I manage to get to the counter, and Scott works a while - goes back to the back to get a printout of something - and finally is able to get my boarding passes to spew out. (My fellow queue-standers are still in the original roped line which continues to grow longer.)

Fortunately security lines are next to nothing - so I am able to get to the gate about 1:20.

Anyway...I hope this is just a rare glitch - but it sure makes me wonder if it is related to the merging of tech systems. I would hope DL at PIT finds a better way to service its customers that have to stand in line - because the queue was not getting any attention yesterday. It was the PITs. :cool:

POSTSCRIPT - I got to the gate EXACTLY at the moment that the agent was calling for 3 bump volunteers - she did not even wait until the flight went out - rebooked me on a DL flight that arrived in SAT about 1.5 hours before the original flight - plus my $300 voucher - so all ended well!

Just curious; did the GA give you FC on the Delta flight?

I did get FC on one of the two DL segments.