Ohio Odyssey: Delta the worst airline ever

And we're back!

We got a quick and easy start Friday morning. I was up at 7am, checked in with Delta so we wouldn't have to wait in line, made everyone breakfast, double checked the luggage, and we were off. We hopped on BART and arrived a good half hour/45min early. That's when everything went wrong. I had already checked us in and paid for the bags, so all we had to do was drop the bags at curbside and make it through security. This is where the trouble started:

We made it curbside, but they refused to take the bags and we had to wait in the line. Which took a while and we finally get up there and this nasty little man tells us no we can't possibly get on the flight and apparently Delta has no more flights leaving from any airport for 200 miles. He charges us $50 a piece to put us on a red-eye to Atlanta and confirms us on a 5pm flight from there to Cleveland. Which equals a whopping 29 hours in an airport!

While checking our luggage in for the red-eye we get a women who moves us to a noon flight (yay for 24hours rather than 29) and prints us tickets that say we are on standby for the 9:30am flight. We then spend the entire day hanging out in the airport, board our plane, get the only row of seats that doesn't recline and make our way to Atlanta.

Picture hot sticky Atlanta at 5 am, we are slumping from concourse to concourse in search of breakfast when we notice there is a 7:37am flight to Akron. Why would we not have been put on this one? This is particularly annoying because we asked the nasty little Delta man if there was any flight flying into any airport within 200 miles of Akron.

While Steve and Kaylea try to grab a nap on awkwardly spaced airport chairs I start canvassing the gates in the hope that someone will help us. Finally a woman at the 3rd gate directs me to a bank of help phones. After 10min of ringing and being on hold a very nice woman finally picks up. I explain the entire situation to her and she checks our tickets. Um so although I am holding in my hand sheets of paper that say we are on standby for the 9:30am flight, we are not! Oh yes she can see where we were added to the list, but she can also see where someone has removed us from the list.

I am horrified and on the verge of a mental snap when she agrees that we were badly treated in SFO and books us on the Akron flight, but the flight has decided to board and push back early so we have to hurry. I sprint the length of concourse C, rouse my groggy party, hustle everyone to the gate at the other end of the concourse where boarding has already started.

At the gate, another nasty little man tells us that he sees us booked on the flight, but the tickets have not been reissued so there is nothing he can do and that I need to talk to the woman on the service phone. So, sweat flying I sprint the concourse back to the length of phones and after another 10min on hold, am connected to a much less helpful women. She doesn't really want to talk to me and her silence is punctuated only by sighs and keyboard clicks. A small cluster of Delta employees is standing by the gate next to the phone bank gesturing and laughing while one guy makes exaggerated running motions. I continue to watch the minutes tick by until after 15more min she tells me there is nothing she can do and hangs up.

I sprint back to the gate (now deserted except for Steve, Kaylea and a handful of standbys). I try again to reason with the man at the gate and he finally relents and prints the passes. We are in the last row and before take off are treated to a fight between two of the flight attendants. We are finally airborne and although the passenger in front of me is belligerent and drunk before we take off, they serve him 4 beers during and hour and a half flight.

I was sort of under the impression before this flight that Delta was a real airline, but if you want to make to somewhere with your sanity and bank account intact (I returned home to find out they had charged the same baggage fee to my card 4 times) do not fly Delta!!!