Tue 5 Feb 2008
Posted by Meg under Itinerary
Forgive me if this post isn’t full of the usual travel ideas and photos, but after a recent experience, it would be wrong not to use this platform to tell my story.
The airline industry has been on shaky ground for the past several years, and Delta Airlines has had its share of financial woes. I can’t speak for the company’s entire infrastructure, but my experience with the gate agents, the baggage sorters, and the flight attendants tells me that this is a company I want to support.
On Sunday afternoon, my fiance McKenzie and I were on our way back home to Virginia after spending the last six weeks on the road. Our first flight was from Bermuda to Boston, with less than a one hour layover to run across Logan International Airport for our plane home. When we landed in Boston, we turned on our cell phones to check all the messages from the week we’d been out of the country, and McKenzie had one of those calls you never want to get. His beloved grandmother had passed away that morning, and his family wanted to know how soon we could make it back to Oregon.
We hurried to the gate for our scheduled flight, and as that plane was boarding, we explained our situation to the gate agents and asked if there was any way we could possibly change our tickets on this extremely short notice. Christina W. and the team of agents at gate A10 that day worked furiously to help us out. At times there were up to four people on the phones at the same time on our behalf — making sure our tickets could be changed, working with customer service agents to be sure we received credit for the value of our original tickets and keeping the price of the switch down, contacting the baggage sorters to pull our luggage to a new plane, and holding the Oregon-bound plane at the gate so we could make it back across the airport before it was in the air. These guys were heroic in their efforts for us, and when we got to our next plane, a flight attendant was waiting for us with bottles of water, boxes of tissues, and a compassionate smile.
We flew first to Salt Lake City, where we had yet another very short layover before boarding our final plane to Oregon. So far in the extended travel day, everything had gone as smoothly as possible, thanks to the helpful and efficient gate agents back at Logan, but we figured that with our last minute change in itinerary and the two very short layovers, it would be a miracle if our luggage made it to Portland with us — but there they were at baggage claim. All four of our 50-pound bags sealed the deal for us: we love Delta.
It’s not just the people — the planes are nice, too. The seats were clean and comfortable, and the in-flight entertainment choices were surprisingly varied and good. On the five-hour trip from Boston to Salt Lake City, I caught up on my trash TV with some E! countdown shows, then brushed up on the candidates in time for Super Tuesday by watching reruns of the latest Democratic debates on CNN, and finished off the flight with highlights from some football game on ESPN.
Aside from the unfortunate circumstances, it was a highly positive travel experience for the two of us, and we remain grateful to the Delta employees who worked so hard to get us to where we needed to be in this difficult time.