Hi Deborah,
At times, I too wish that the entire world could boycott the airlines and not fly for an entire year!
I’m sorry to hear about the trouble that your daughter experienced during the connection. The gate agent has access to information which would indicate that she was attempting to make a connection and her inbound flight was delayed. Technically, you need to be at the gate before boarding—but that was impossible with the delay. I know that these time-sensitive situations must be difficult to judge for a gate agent, but in this case, it sounds like the agent made the wrong call and assumed it was impossible for her to make it before the flight departed. Sometimes you can’t blame them—but I at least hope that agent was at least sympathetic. Sympathetic agents are sometimes better than non-sympathetic ones who throw you on the aircraft at the last minute.
No one should ever have to wait in a line of 25 other passengers to receive accommodation paperwork. That is just not fair—especially after experiencing that.
I know her final destination was IAD airport, but can I assume this connection was in Atlanta? If so, just my opinion, but passengers do quite frequently ask to deplane first during a connection. In Atlanta, more than half of the passengers are generally connecting to another flight. The request has been used and abused many times. You may want to suggest to her that she asks the passengers—not the flight attendant—if she could move ahead of them. If the flight was significantly delayed, non-connecting passengers would surely be willing to give her the right of way.
I hope she made it this morning and that your family can enjoy your Thanksgiving together. She deserves a nice break after dealing with that mess.
If your daughter is upset about the experience, please invite her to join our forum and tell us about it. Also, she may wish to contact Delta. From my experience, they have the most generous Customer Relations department. We’d love to hear back, so please let us know if it all worked out.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Matt
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