Delta's CEO office just called to offer me and I accepted an additional $350 travel voucher and an apology for several Delta phone agents repeatedly failing to alert me of a ticketing problem with my LAM flight from Maputo to Johannesburg on 6/22. According to this representative, Delta issued the ticket on LAM on 6/19, but the LAM system repeatedly rejected the ticket in their system between 6/19 and 6/22, which explains why LAM was unable to see my ticket when I attempted to check-in on 6/22 in Maputo.
Unfortunately, none of the THREE Delta phone agents I spoke to that week - on 6/19, early on 6/22 when I re-confirmed my ticket via a call to Delta Reservations, and on 6/22 in my final emergency call to Salt Lake City from Maputo airport - none of these agents were able to detect that LAM was rejecting Delta's ticketing request, and thereby alert me to the crisis headed my way at the airport. So the Delta CEO representative was willing to offer the additional voucher as further compensation for these failures.
Although I do still believe I could take Delta to Small Claims for being involuntarily denied boarding for the oversold DL 201 flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta on 6/22, at this point I'm more than happy to accept the extra travel voucher and apology from a Delta official who was finally polite and fairly reasonable in her offer of accommodations.
And for me the moral of the story is: 1.) Don't trust small carriers like LAM Mozambican Airlines with e-ticketing arrangements, 2.) Don't trust Delta phone agents to make ticketing arrangements with small carriers like LAM, and 3.) Be firm and persistent with Delta Customer Care. I think by steadily escalating my way up the chain of command, and by finally pressing the legal Contract of Carriage argument for involuntary denied boarding compensation, I was able to get a higher-level official to call me directly on my cell phone and be fairly reasonable in response.
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