a REALLY bad flight home

I plan on writing an entry on Nicole and Joe's Fabulous Wedding, but before I do, I need to recover from the flight from hell. Rather than write my normal dramatic play by play, I'm going to paste my letter of complaint to Delta airlines below. I'm seriously considering purchasing the URL "Deltasucks.com". But if my experience is any indicator, someone probably already has a site there.

Here's my letter to Delta's "customer care" department.

I’m writing in to you by the recommendation of your customer service. Though I have had continuous problems with delays and flight cancellations with Delta in the half dozen or so flights I have taken with you in the past six months, last night surpasses them all and ranks as THE worst flight of my life. This is a considerable feat considering my extensive travel experience.

It was on the second leg of a connecting flight that was to go from Cincinnati to Dayton. The first leg that went from Norfolk VA to Cincinnati had been delayed of course, and I had to run to the opposite end of the airport in order to get to the gate on time. I arrived there only to find out that the pilot could not be found and the flight was to be delayed until he would arrive. No estimate on when that would be was ever given.

When we finally did board, we sat on the ground for half an hour then taxied for another 20 minutes before it was decided we needed to be de-iced. That took another 40 minutes as we waited in line to be de-iced. Then we were told that we had run out of fuel from sitting on the ground with our engines running, so we had to taxi back again to get more fuel. That took another 30 minutes. At this point we had been on the ground, locked on the plane for almost two hours!! In addition, no food or snacks were offered, even when asked by the now starving passengers (myself included). Once in the air, we seemed to meander for about an hour, which was odd as the flight should take less than 20 minutes since we were only going about 60 miles to the Dayton airport. We finally got a message from the captain, who stated that some of the landing gear wouldn’t ascend and that we would have to make an emergency landing back at CINCINNATI! We circled for at least another 30 minutes, not descending, making us all wonder what the hell the pilot was doing. Apparently there was some uncertainty about how to get the rest of the landing gear back down properly so we could land. My wife was terrified and in tears, and everyone was praying that we would just making it back down alive. During this whole fiasco, we were told we weren’t allowed to leave our seats, even to go to the bathroom, which only added to our discomfort.

We finally did land and were instantly rushed off to a room where we were told we had to stay until management was contacted. We were refused any food, drink, or compensation of any type during this waiting period that lasted for more than a half hour. The biggest irony is that I live in Cincinnati, and was only flying into Dayton because of Delta’s strange ticket-pricing strategy that makes any Cincinnati resident on a budget to reboard a plane in the Cincinnati airport and fly to Dayton only to drive back to Cincinnati. At this point, I just wanted to grab my luggage from the plane and have a taxi drive me 10 miles to my house. This modest request was refused by the unfriendly man standing guard over us and holding our luggage hostage. When at last we were informed that we could get our luggage, we were told that we could not receive any compensation for the taxi home. After being ignored, starved, and terrified, I was appalled that after all of that, I was refused the simple courtesy of being driven home.

To add to all of this, a friend of mine had driven out to pick us up from the Dayton airport and was told by Delta that our flight landed normally in Dayton, even AFTER we had landed back in Cincinnati with our malfunctioning landing gear. Thus, Delta not only ruined my evening, but that of my friend’s as well.

This could be seen as a comedy of errors by Delta, a series of unfortunate events caused by poor planning, bad training, lapsed maintenance, and misguided management. One could, in hindsight almost laugh at this if it wasn’t for the fact that we are talking about air transportation here. The risk and injury to the passengers of flight 5516 is impossible to erase by any compensation. For me and my very shaken wife, I would expect at the very least, full refund of the money spent on our tickets ($476.20) and taxi fare ($36). Any additional compensation would go a long way in repairing such an indelible injury to us.