[kapilanand]

I wanted to bring out a recent case of gross incompetence and unprofessionalism on behalf of Delta airlines.

We had a reserved a Delta/China southern (both are part of an alliance) return ticket from San Francisco to New Delhi. We were supposed to leave San Francisco on 18th December (Friday). The flights were SFO-LA (operated by Delta) at 7 pm, LA-Guangzhou at 10.30 pm and then Guangzhou to New Delhi.

We reached SFO airport at 4 pm and found out at 5 pm that Delta flight is delayed till 9.50 pm. We requested Delta to put us on an earlier flight, otherwise we would would miss our flight from LA. Delta did put us on standby for an earlier flight. Inspite of our request that we have an international flight to catch, Delta personnel at SFO airport refused to prioritize us on standby list and we could not catch the earlier flight.

Afterwords, Delta personnel told us that they are now trying to put us on a new flight on Saturday morning (19th December). We received a confirmed flight to New Delhi through Japan that was leaving SFO at 8 am on Saturday morning.

We reached SFO airport on Saturday morning around 5 am and after waiting for 1.5 hours at check-in counter, Delta personnel at SFO airport told us that our flight from SFO-LA and LA to Tokyo is confirmed but our flight from Tokyo to New Delhi is not available anymore. When we showed that the confirmed ticket they gave us on Friday evening, they gave us a weird reasoning that it was confirmed on Friday evening and not anymore. Thereafter, they did not allow us to board the flight.

In all this, Delta personnel never accepted that they made a mistake in rescheduling our flight. They were extremely rude, plainly told us that they cannot do anything else and gave us China Southern airlines number to reschedule on our own. China Southern kept telling us that Delta missed its first flight so Delta should take care of the issue. We requested Delta personnel to reschedule a flight over Atlantic but they told us China Southern is not cooperating with them (inspite of the fact that they both are part of same alliance and run code-shared flights).

Overall, Delta personnel just washed their hands off the situation and left it on us to figure it all out. We called Delta helpline, stayed at SFO airport till 1 pm, talked to several agents on helpline, and finally after three to four hours of talking with the personnel, we got a next flight for 20th December, Sunday evening (SFO-LA, LA - Guangzhou, Guangzhou-New Delhi) - our original flight delayed by two days.

After Delta rescheduled our flight, we called China Southern to confirm that changes are reflected well. They told us that Delta has left some flights open while rescheduling and we might face some issues at check-in. When we called Delta again, they kept telling us that everything is confirmed and there are no open segments. However, we faced issues while checking in at LA (on to our flight to New Delhi) and then again at New Delhi airport for our return leg. At LA airport, agent made us wait for one hour while he was confirming the flight while at New Delhi airport, we only received boarding pass for New Delhi-Guangzhou airport and they asked us to follow up with agents at Guangzhou for boarding pass of next flight.

Inspite of all these problems, Delta refused to give us any compensation for all this inconvenience. Apart from compensation, extremely rude
and unsupportive staff at SFO airport just made this trip a very bad experience.