Partyin' Like Rockstars

Alright, so hello everyone. I'm Steph of Queen of Dysfunction and I'm here with Jay, Jim, and Amber to trash DDQ's place while she's off in the land of giardia and two-bit donkey shows.

Since I'm hungover after partying with the other four in Annie's pad last night, let's kick things of with something easy shall we? How about our experience with Delta fucking airlines during the first girl's vacation I ever took with Annie and our friend Ashley:

If Satan wanted to increase the misery in hell a notch he would do well to enlist the help of a customer service consultant trained by Delta Airlines.

In March of 2005 Annie, our friend Ashley and I discovered that Delta Airlines operates somewhat akin to an un-greased dildo in the ass: you go to delta.com, select your flight then plug in your credit card information. In return for your hard-earned cash you receive an e-ticket confirmation that is absolutely worthless until you arrive at the airport to physically confirm that a plane is at your assigned gate and your flight’s crew actually bothered to show up for work sober.

We purchased tickets to fly from Sacramento, California to Savannah, Georgia for vacation.

We arrived at the airport in Sacramento and was informed immediately that our flight was an hour late, which turned into three hours by the time we boarded. Not to worry, said the flight attendant, our connecting flight was delayed three hours as well.

I think she had intended this to be good news. Instead it left us wondering what army of drunken orangutans had been entrusted to run this operation. As it turns out it was a rather stupid and disagreeable army and calling them orangutans would be an insult to apes.

Finally, three hours later, we were flung into the not-so-friendly skies on board an aging contraption that looked like Wilbur and Orville may have christened it’s maiden flight. As if the rattle-trap condition of the plane weren’t enough, God found humor on this particular afternoon by flinging us around on air currents that resulted in the better portion of the passengers discovering religion.

The plane lurched, shook, swaggered and on several occasions we were treated to a stomach-in-the-throat free-falling sensation which resulted in screaming passengers and loud recitations of the Lord’s Prayer. The three of us (being good Catholic girls and all) managed to produce a rosary over which we clung to one another and half-screamed-half-prayed.

During bumpy flights it is typical for me to watch the flight attendants. If they are nonchalant I relax and try not to let the horrible in-flight movie kill my Wild Turkey buzz. I figure I'll reserve my panic for the occasion I see the flight crew soaked in a nervous sweat and strapping on parachutes. Unfortunately the turbulence was rough enough that the pilot cancelled all drink and meal services and ordered the attendants to their seats… thus leaving us passengers alone to draw our own conclusions regarding what seemed to be our inevitable demise. I would like to posit here that I do not blame Delta for our experience on that flight. Just the awful service we received on the ground.

Fortunately for all aboard, I have the amazing ability to hold an aircraft aloft by clinging to the arm-rest of my assigned seat. After a few passes over the Eastern seaboard, the pilot managed to locate a runway in Atlanta and put the bird down before our own and our fellow passenger's screams rendered everyone deaf. We then proceeded to wait at another gate for our connecting flight to Savannah for another two hours (totaling a five hour delay) before Delta informed all of us that our flight had been canceled due to lack of a flight crew.

That's right. Our flight was not canceled due to inclement weather nor mechanical problems. Delta had simply failed to schedule a crew to fly 150 of us from Atlanta to Savannah after merrily selling us tickets promising they would do so. Of course the gate agents could not resist playfully allowing us to sit around until after 1 AM before informing us they had no intention of delivering us to our destination.

Passengers were directed toward the Delta counter in the main terminal for re-booking. We joined a rivulet of people that soon became a throng of hundreds of would-be Delta passengers whose flights had also been canceled due to a lack of flight crews. It was an absolutely delightful crowd of displaced travelers who converged on the Delta counter at about 1:15 AM, which is when the real fun started.

Once in line we noticed that the crowd was composed primarily of members of the military, the majority of which were obviously on leave from Iraq (the DCUs and desert-issue boots were a dead giveaway). Surely, we whispered amongst ourselves, Delta will make special arrangements for these folks knowing that they have a finite amount of leave to spend with family and friends.

Didn't happen. On top of being laughably disorganized, Delta's employees are pinko commie bastards who obviously hate the USA, God, Mom and apple pie. I was impressed by the level of indifference with which the airline’s agents dismissed all of their customers, even the uniformed ones on leave from serving in Iraq.

Delta placed all of us on stand-by for flights the following day, then informed us that a) they would not be providing hotel rooms for any of us (we were invited to sleep in Hartsfield-Atlanta Airport) b) they would not be providing us vouchers for rental cars so that we could simply drive to our destinations (it was against their policy) and c) they would not be providing us refunds on our fares (this too was against their policy). After waiting in line for fucking ever we also found out that in addition to all this, Delta would refuse to relinquish our baggage to us as well, ensuring that nobody had so much as a toothbrush to get us through the night.

We were re-booked for a flight leaving at 9 PM the following night. We were not allowed to re-book for an earlier flight to Savannah despite the existence of two morning flights into the coastal town (they were already overbooked it was explained). My protests over being stranded for 24 hours in an airport 2,000 miles away from home were craftily ignored by the black-hearted ticket agent in front of me. Instead, she delivered a plasticky-strained smile before flippantly repeating that I was on stand-by for the 9 PM flight the following evening.

In the end we each had to forego the $298.40 (for a total of $895.20 in unrealized airfare) paid for connecting flights between Atlanta to Savannah, pay Avis $130 for a one-way rental to our destination, put out another chunk of change at a Wal-Mart in Macon (the only store open at that hour) for a change of clothes and basic toiletries, and plunk down $30 for a full tank of gas in the rental car before we commenced driving all night from Atlanta to Savannah.

At least we weren't alone. We waited in line at the Avis counter in Atlanta for an hour and a half while the staff there rented cars to a couple hundred of our fellow Delta casualties. We were lucky that there were three of us so that someone could simultaneously stand in another line for our baggage (as we were instructed to do before the same people then told us to fuck off by Delta's elite corps of customer service agents informed us that we would not be allowed to pick up our luggage as the airline was holding it for delivery to our respective destinations.)

The coup de grace was the fact that after spending five hours between 2:30 AM and 7:30AM on the road, we had to return to Savannah Airport the next morning to pick up our luggage... then wait another two hours when Delta failed to meet even that pathetic deadline.

The return trip was only slightly better. Delta imposed more staffing-related delays on all three of our return flights between Savannah and Atlanta, Atlanta and Salt Lake City, and Salt Lake City and Sacramento. This was before losing our luggage between Salt Lake City and Sacramento (which was delivered to each of our homes two days later after baggage handlers had finished using them as wheel chocks and ballistic missile targets.)

The three of us love to travel and welcome low fares. However, we ended up spending more money for a rental car, clothing, toiletries, and a lost evening at a hotel in Savannah that went unoccupied than if we had flown a higher quality carrier such as United or American.

Needless to say, we will NEVER fly Delta again. I think all of us were in agreement that we would sooner hitch a ride with a van full of serial killers armed to the teeth than allow ourselves to be ass-fucked by this company a second time.

...and yes, it wasn't with some small degree of smugness that we watched Delta declare bankruptcy several months after this bastard of a trip.