Once upon a time, there was a little girl who dreamed for months and months of going to LA for a big LOST finale party that her fiancee and his dad were hosting.  She was so excited and she did her best to help out with whatever needed it.  She planned it all out: outfits to wear, shoes to buy, etc.  Joined a gym 7 months prior so she could start to get in better shape.  Booked airline tickets and everything.

Then Delta Airlines messed all these plans up.  Delta is a piece of shit airline.  People should boycott Delta and Delta should go out of business.  I hope someone from Delta Googles Delta and sees my very specific complaints against Delta.  Delta is the worst airline to EVER exist.  Delta’s planes are CONSTANTLY having “mechanical issues” and Delta’s customer service is the WORST customer service ever.  If you’re reading this now because you typed “Delta reviews” or “Should I fly Delta?” into your search engine, I am going to strongly recommend that you do not ever book any flights on Delta.  And if you do, just hope that you have nowhere important to be, be prepared to be delayed or canceled on some leg of your journey, and be prepared to deal with the absolute least helpful/non-caring customer service representatives you could possible imagine.  I’m just saying.

Jay, Clif and I had plans to fly out to LAX from Raleigh last night, May 21.  Our initial flight to Atlanta was delayed by 3 hours because of thunderstorms between Raleigh & Atlanta.  Flights were still leaving Atlanta and we were going to miss our connecting flight.  Everyone who had a connecting flight had to be rescheduled or face spending the night in the Atlanta Airport.  Because I was having a fit at that point, Jay made the executive decision to get us on a flight to LA that connected in Memphis, TN & got into LAX at 11:30am.  The flight left at 6:40am.  We have been up since 5am, running on 4.5 hours of sleep.

We got on that flight with no problems out of Raleigh.  About 40 minutes outside of Memphis, the captain announces that there is fog on the ground in Memphis.  This wouldn’t be a problem, however, due to some in-flight equipment malfunctioning, we would not be able to land in the fog and had to make an immediate landing in Little Rock, AR.  We get to Little Rock and find out that the issue is so bad that they had to have the manufacturer of the broken parts drive 3 hours to look at/fix it.  As a result, they would bus us 2-3 hrs to Memphis and we could try to get a new flight out from there.  No guarantees and we definitely would not have been in LA for a long time.  We called the Delta customer service line that was provided to us.  Did I mention that Delta has the worst customer service I’ve ever dealt with?  I have had problems with flying Delta many, many times in the past and the customer service was always incredibly short, rude, and very unhelpful.  The woman we spoke to was no exception.  She was rude to Jay and did not care to even listen to what we had to say.  She continually insisted that we were in Little Rock because of a “weather issue” and therefore “I cannot help you, there is nothing Delta can do for you.  This is not Delta’s fault.”  We told her over and over again that it was a mechanical issue.  We begged her.  We pleaded with her.  We explained the situation.  We asked her to put us on another carrier, that we would pay extra.  We asked her to fly us into Burbank or San Diego or even Vegas & we would drive.  She told us there was no mechanical issue and refused to look it up to verify we were not lying and maintained that it was not Delta’s fault so she couldn’t help us other than fly us back to an already heavily-delayed Atlanta (at 8am, mind you) and try to fly us out to Los Angeles later today.

Finally, a woman approached me saying she was able to get onto an American Eagle flight that would get her into LA at 3:25pm.  I asked the woman on the phone if she could do that for me.  Okay…at this point, I told her flat out that she had to do this for us.  I told her “This IS a mechanical issue and it IS Delta’s fault.  A woman here was just booked on an American Eagle flight and I’d like you to please do that for us.”  She told me that because it was a weather issue (still not looking it up), she wasn’t going to put me on another airline, we were basically SOL.  At this point, I had had it.  She spoke 10 minutes on the phone to Jay & he had had enough of her attitude and passed her off to me, where I spent a good 10 minutes begging her to please help us.  I told her at this point, “You are going to put us on the flight.  The weather last night was out of Delta’s control but Delta messed up on this flight and I’ve explained to you the importance of us getting to LA.”

SHE HUNG UP ON ME.

Well, no, not quite hung up but rather transferred me to another department without warning, a department that didn’t even handle reservation issues.  The woman there told me to just go downstairs to the ticket counter because she couldn’t help me at all.  We did that.  I went to talk to Delta and Jay went to see about American & Southwest.  The woman at the Delta counter was nice – she gave me a packet of tissues because I was sobbing – but said she couldn’t help me.  I asked for a refund and she said they’d have to cancel the entire trip, including Monday’s flight home.  I couldn’t risk it at that moment since I missed 3 days of work last week for my aunt’s wake/funeral and I am missing Monday.  Plus, Jay has his last day of a summer class he’s been taking on Tuesday.

I met Jay at the Southwest counter where the woman there was friendly and helpful, like most Southwest employees.  Unlike Delta, Southwest always has such wonderful customer service.  It’s a shame they don’t fly a lot of places and it’s never direct.  She was able to score us 3 seats to LAX but we’d have to go through St. Louis and wouldn’t get into LA until 5:30pm.  This was our only option at this point.  $1,300 later, we had tickets.

So now I’m sitting in the St. Louis airport and I’m completely spent.  I’m exhausted, I’m stressed, I’m achy, I look like crap, I need to shower and I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  I really, really needed a day to myself after I got home from my aunt’s funeral.  I knew I wasn’t going to get one until today, where I could unwind a little bit at the hotel, but now that’s shot to shit too.  Tomorrow is going to be very busy.  I was really counting on having time to regroup.  Thanks to Delta, my trip went from 3 days in LA to less than 2 days.  I am so upset and so disappointed.  I had outfits all planned out and things I planned on doing and I have been looking forward to this trip for more than half a year.  I hate Delta.  I vowed to never fly them again back in 2008 but had to for Hawaii & the times worked out best for this trip.  Remember I got delayed like 5 or 6 hours at LAX when I was going to Hawaii?  That was because of Delta and another one of their planes that had some mechanical issues.  If so many planes are seemingly falling apart, then Delta must be a very unsafe air carrier.  Unsafe and unreliable.

I feel that Delta owes us a huge apology.  Oh but no, wait.  Nothing that ever happens with a messed up Delta flight is ever Delta’s fault.  My bad.