Delta Airlines Review

Delta, oh Delta, where to begin?

My husband is from Australia, and is a world-traveler now living with me here in Washington.  The only time he has ever lost his luggage in his hundreds of trips has been with Delta in the past.

We decided to go on a 2nd honeymoon of sorts with a great fare we found for $230 round-trip from Seattle to Jacksonville with a stop in Atlanta.  Going there was fine - there was turbulence, but it's not like the pilots can really avoid that.  The seats were narrow but it was OK for the time being.

The flight back was hell-on-earth.  We all boarded the plane and were ready to go and then the pilot came on to inform us that they had lost communication with the tower and couldn't take off until it was re-established.  We sat at the gate for AN HOUR-AND-A-HALF (the flight to Atlanta from Jacksonville would only be about an hour.)  They didn't come through with drinks or anything, and the plane was BOILING.  Picture a bunch of people crowded in narrow seats, ticked off, impatient, on a hot plane.  Then people started sweating and it stunk.  They really could have come through with at least SOMETHING... cheapies.

Anyway, we FINALLY took off and landed at Atlanta.  By the time we landed, we had about 25 minutes until our connecting flight was to take off.  Keep in mind that Atlanta is the HUB for Delta.  So, we're taxiing and we get to the gate and alas, there is another plane in our spot.  My husband and I look outside and see about 20 other gates just sitting there open.  But do we take any of those other gates?  No.  We sit, again, in the hot plane with the ticked off, smelly, irked passengers, and WAIT for OUR gate to be available.  Ridiculous.  Needless to say, we AND most of the other passengers on the plane, missed our connecting flight and had to wait another few hours for the next one going out.  The only up side was that it gave us some time to freshen up and grab a bite to eat -- and that as soon as we arrived at the gate, we explained what happened and were immediately printed new boarding passes for the next flight.  The Atlanta airport is disgusting, however, so it's not like we wanted to stay there for any amount of time, much less a few hours.  We were not compensated for the fact we missed our flight and that the plane arrived late.  At least on other airlines if you have that problem they give you a voucher or something.  Not this one!

Finally we arrived home at SeaTac, praying we'd receive our bags.  Whatever morons were unloading the luggage decided to take their sweet time, and it took an HOUR -- YES, an HOUR -- for the luggage carousel to start moving with anyone's baggage.  Twenty minutes after that (so, an hour and 20 minutes waiting for our luggage to come off the tarmack) we finally received our luggage.

I'd give Delta a "1" out of "5" except for the fact we did receive our bags and we did get on the next connecting flight.  Horrible.  We will never fly Delta again unless it's our last resort.