Delta Airline vent

[kymom99]

My son was supposed to come home for a visit today (Monday). His flight was scheduled for 5:55 am. At 11:30 pm last night it was cancelled. There is nothing available until Tuesday, getting him home after 8 pm. So he will be here a whole day and a half. To say I’m upset is an understatement. The flight was full. I don’t get it.

 

[kymom99]

He’s on the phone with them. Sounds like it might be weather related.

 

[kymom99]

Update: after 2 hours on the phone, they got him on another flight this morning. Praying this one can leave on schedule.

 

[WAstateDVCDaddy]

Hope the flights work out. Delta is generally good about having enough planes /crew available to deal with issues that arise - at least in my neck of the woods. Weather related issues can throw a major wrench in any airline’s schedule though.

The only issue I have ever had with Delta (3-4 international and 2-3 domestic flights per year for a decade straight) was one flight to Tokyo which had a mechanical problem. They delayed the flight 23 hours. Seemed kind of silly to call it a delay, but I guess they did fly two flights out that next morning.

 

[Southernmiss]

It is so frustrating.

Our daughter, then 19, got hung up in Dallas on her first ever air trip and she was by herself. This was 3 years ago in August after a bad line of thunderstorms- in the big debacle where people were stranded for a week in the airport

Dd was to meet a biology class in Tucson that was going remote in Arizona and needed to be there or miss the bus and experience.

No flights out of that airport to Tucson until 48 hours later, by then, she would have missed the bus.

Long story short, we had a young family friend doing an internship in Dallas. She was able to pick dd up, take her to buy a change of clothes (airline already had her luggage) and to sleep in her apartment overnight.

We were able to rebook her on a new flight at another Dallas Airport the next morning so she could catch the group in time.

She was the last one in and made the bus.

We spent 12 hours guiding her by phone on how to get out of the mess. She spent a few moments in the airport restroom having a good cry and pulling herself together.

She definitely learned a lot fast about travel.

 

[kdonnel]

ATL was slammed with storms yesterday. Anytime there are significant weather events in ATL it really has a negative impact on all Delta flights.

 

[kymom99]

The flight they changed him to was having him on standby. He was able to get on his first flight with no problem. The connecting flight was going to be delayed 4 hours giving him an almost 8 hour layover. He was able to get on another flight that was about ready to leave. So he will be getting here 15 minutes earlier than he originally was scheduled.

I’m exhausted!

 

[jo-jo]

I’m exhausted!

Drink lots of coffee, can't sleep now, he's only home for a few days.

I don't understand the domino effect with planes and weather, but 16 hours later and then cancel is horrible. Glad it worked out. I have been lucky enough only to have long delays after vacations. Don't mind that as much vs getting it 12 hours late and missing out park time or the $500 for a room.

 

[sam_gordon]

Any chance he was going through NYC? I've experienced and have seen a lot of flights cancelled to/from LGA and JFK on Delta through those airports.

 

[fly girl]

In absolute honesty, it has been a horrible summer with Delta. When you have major hubs (ATL, LGA/JFK, DTW) constantly having weather and crew duty days already scheduled within hours of the daily maximum, chaos ensues.

I said it in an earlier post about summer travel, both the airlines and ATC are to blame.

Airlines are definitely not putting enough padding into crew duty limits. June - August is always busy, and they create schedules to maximize flying. However, (imho) the trips created for the crews are made without the necessary contingencies in place. You need padding for delays as summer thunderstorms are inevitable.

ATC, whole different set of problems. They have done a massive hire and they don't know how to reroute traffic in real time like the old timers, so when any blip of weather occurs they close the air space. It is incredibly frustrating.

The worst part Delta is doing right now is the "rolling delay." They know the plane and/or crew is coming in late, but they keep rolling a new departure time. First it is 30 minutes, then an hour, after that hour they add 45 minutes. It is absolutely irritating. I know they do it in hopes the can reroute a different plane and/or crew, but that perfect case scenario is few and far between. I am not a fan of the rolling delay.

@kymom99, I am so glad he is making it home earlier. Enjoy your time.

 

[dvcgirl67]

Glad your son made his flight! It's been a miserable summer of delays. I haven't flown anywhere since May, but my pet sitting business has been more challenging to staff with many of our customers having their flights delayed or cancelled. Just had another one on Saturday....customers were booked on United on a full flight back to Newark. Nope, they just cancelled it....didn't have a flight crew. My customer has to scramble to find a flight....ended up flying out of Rome the next day. So they had to get back up to Rome, get a room for the night....lots of extra expense.

 

[sam_gordon]

Before one of flights on Friday, I overhead a Delta crew talking saying this summer has been the worst for cancellations and delays in their careers.

 

[fly girl]

Before one of flights on Friday, I overhead a Delta crew talking saying this summer has been the worst for cancellations and delays in their careers.

100%, the absolute worst I have seen in 25+ years.

 

[merdie]

Our flight to Orlando two weeks ago was cancelled and I knew it would be. The flight we were on goes back and forth from MCO to RDU about 6 times everyday, well when the plane doesn’t get into RDU the night before, the morning flight to Orlando is being consistently cancelled. Looking at Flight Aware, it’s cancelled almost 25% of the time these days which seems completely unreasonable.

They rebooked us through ATL departing 14 hours later, landing after midnight at MCO. We opted to drive instead.

 

[mjkacmom]

I have a lot of friends flying this summer, H travels for work, and my kids actually fly a lot. It’s been HORRIBLE, to the extent if a flight is on time, it’s a miracle. My friend’s son’s baseball team had to rent a bus to get from Nashville to NJ, another friend’s family had to rent a car to get home from Florida. My daughter’s boyfriend earned so many points from spirit due to delays that his next few flights are free. United has a big hub at our airport, they started canceling flights just to try to prevent more delays. I think it’s the worst it’s ever been.

 

[kymom99]

He was going from Albany to Detroit to cvg. That was the flight that was cancelled. The new flight went Albany to LaGuardia to cvg. They did have some rough weather but only the one flight was cancelled out of Albany according to flight aware.

 

[sam_gordon]

He was going from Albany to Detroit to cvg. That was the flight that was cancelled. The new flight went Albany to LaGuardia to cvg. They did have some rough weather but only the one flight was cancelled out of Albany according to flight aware.

I flew out of Burlington, VT on Friday. I was going to Detroit to Lexington. There were two earlier flights, one to LGA and one to JFK that I could have gotten on, but they would only have gotten me home 20 minutes earlier (and both itineraries would have gone through Atlanta). I elected to avoid the NYC hop. Turns out the flight from Burlington to LGA got cancelled (there was a line at the desk, so I'm assuming it was done near flight time), the one to JFK left at least 20 minutes late, possibly more.

Earlier this year I was going through NYC to get to Maine. My flight from JFK to Maine was cancelled, I found another one from LGA, booked that, THAT one was cancelled, but I fortunately found another flight to complete my trip and got in maybe an hour later than originally scheduled. That day had a LOT of storms in the NE.

My flight home from Maine went NYC to ATL to LEX. The flight from LGA to ATL was delayed by an hour(?). When we got to Atlanta, EVERY connecting flight listed for people on that plane was showing as delayed. When I got to my next gate, the flight that was supposed to leave before ours ended up being cancelled for lack of a crew. Atlanta had a 90 minute(?) ground stop that afternoon and it obviously messed EVERYTHING up. I was supposed to land at my home airport before midnight and it was 3am when we got in.

 

[DLgal]

Glad your son was able to make it close to his originally scheduled arrival time.

Hearing all of this, I guess we got lucky with our Delta flights to MCO via SLC and back in the last 2 weeks. However, I purposely chose the flight that stopped in SLC over ATL because of weather concerns. All of our flights were on time except for one that departed 15 minutes late because the inbound aircraft to MCO on our return home had been delayed leaving SLC.

The one thing I noticed when booking was that Delta offers a LOT of connecting flights with VERY tight connections (under an hour). This is super risky because even a small delay can force you to miss your connection due to the fact that they close boarding 15 minutes before departure. This almost happened to us coming home. We originally had a 3 hour layover but Delta changed our flight to only have 50 min. We arrived 15 min late. It took us 10 min to get off from our seats in the back. That left us 10 minutes to get to the next gate before they shut the doors. The next gate was not super close. We had to book it and were among the last to board. I didn't like that at all.

 

[focusondisney]

Things have been so bad with flights the last year or 2, with every airline. At this point, the public should just expect problems. I do anyway. I’m happily surprised if things go normally actually. Between ATC, customer demand & airline staffing & scheduling issues, the whole system is a mess. And I think it will be for a few more years. It’s ridiculous, especially at the prices people are paying.

 

[kymom99]

100%, the absolute worst I have seen in 25+ years.

I told him after this, he can do anything. Now we have to hope he gets back Thursday so he can work Friday.

He said he got off the plane in LaGuardia and saw his next flight was delayed 4 hours. He was walking past another gate and heard them paging people saying it was their last call. The flight was leaving for cvg. So he went to the desk and asked if he could get on that flight. I’m proud of how he handled himself through all this.