Had an opportunity to go to Michigan this past week to tour an herbal plant. I purchase a good deal of products for my clients from this firm, and I wanted to assure myself that the products were healthy and organic. This means without chemicals, pesticides, herbicides and so forth.
Laboring under a misunderstanding of what the cost for a non-stop flight was, I opted to make a connecting flight. I thought I would be saving about $700.00 on the trip. At any rate, I have not flown Delta much in the past, and I assure you that I will not choose this airline again anytime soon.
We had four flights. Three of the four were late. In fact, as we boarded the first leg of our trip home, there were ninety passengers on the stand-by list due to their incoming flight being late.
Our first leg outbound was late by 1.5 hours taking off from Houston. We had a very close connection for the second leg of the trip. When we arrived for our connection, the ticket agent told me to RUN to the gate just down the terminal, that they were completing their boarding. I rushed to the gate. They were just closing the gate when I arrived. I explained that our flight had been delayed in Houston, and we were just not arriving. I had hoped that by explaining to the attendant that my tardiness was beyond my control, she would let me into the hallowed gate and onto my flight. No. She just shook her head, said I was late, catch a later flight. Certainly not the customer service I had been expecting.
The next flight was a little over an hour away, but we were on stand-by. I returned to the nice ticket agent, who had told me to run, and explained what had happened. She immediately picked up the phone and called Rick, who was the keeper of the stand-by seats for the next plane going north. We again, RAN down to that gate, and spoke to Rick. He told us that he would do what he could, and we should go and get something to eat.
After a sparse lunch, we returned to Rick’s area of supervision. We see several stranded passengers from other late flights vying for his attention, hoping to win the coveted seats. We had situated ourselves right in his line of sight. There was no way he could forget his promise to us. My companion asked him if we were still good to go. He said that someone had thrown a kink in the works, but we were still on his radar.
Now, for those who know me, I am a pretty peaceful person. I normally roll with the flow, but when plans made over a month in advance start to go south, I tend to get a little upset.
Tomorrow I will tell you what happened….
Until next time,
Polly
