Some years ago I had to take a Delta flight with a planned 5-hour stop in Atlanta, requiring a change of planes to my end destination of course. I was traveling with a large duffel bag and since there was no guarantee of where my connecting flight would be (Atlanta is a HUGE airport) and no guarantee that I could pick it up and check it in between flights, I asked Delta if there was any way the bag could fly straight through, without me having to babysit it in Atlanta. No sir, absolutely not, all checked baggage must be accompanied by yadayada.
When I actually got into Atlanta and went looking for my bag, I was told that contrary to Delta's supervisors insistence, my bag HAD been sent ahead without me. OK, fine. When I finally got to the other end, I asked where's my bag? And they said a) it couldn't have come through by itself and b) Gee, we don't know. Eventually it turned up, unsupervised, unsecured, in an open holding area. Where it must have been for five hours.
Delta? PLEASE. All I can say is that in decades of having flown with them and others, I've never known an airline to LIE so consistently and NEEDLESSLY as Delta does. I've had them say an aircraft had landed and passengers debarked, when in fact the aircraft was being held at the originating airport for a bomb scare. Small problem: Where'd the passengers go? Oh, yeah, they were still on the aircraft with the supposed bomb.
Or the morning it was o'dawn hundred and I had a first flight out. Twenty minutes before flight time, there's no aircraft at the jetway, and I know it takes 30 minutes to load that plane, so I ask, where's the equipment? Oh, they're just bringing it around from the hangar. Ergh, no, ten minutes later it taxis up and a flight crew walks off. They'd just FLOWIN IT IN from the central maintenance depot, two hours away. WHY LIE? Because it is easy. That's the corporate culture at Delta.
Not that Delta is overall any better or worse than a number of other players, but contrast them to American. One day everyone is fubared with weather delays and I asked a gate agent about where the incoming equipment was, because they CAN actually look up the tail number and tell you where the plane you're booked on is coming from. If that plane is a thousand miles away and someone tells you "it will be here in an hour"...eh, you know that ain't gonna happen. The gate agent not only volunteered to look for the tail number, but she also offered to rebook me on another flight that was, in theory, due in a half hour later but in practice would physically be there a half hour sooner--and took less time to reboard as well. I wound up getting out an hour sooner. American often is damn pricey, sometimes 3x what others are, with fewer flights. But the attitude has always been great. That's all too rare these days.
Since American started repainting their fleet, I've become a bit more cynical about them. They used to just paint the stripes and trim, leaving the fuselage bare, for the terribly practical reason that PAINT IS HEAVY and by not painting the bulk of the plane, they saved money on the fuel load on every flight. Which helped keep fares down and profits up. Now, that's the kind of business sense I like.
