I Will Never Forgive Delta Airlines

Delta Airlines is evil and I will never forgive them.

Not for the flight to Santa Marta I missed: That was entirely my fault.

Not for the suitcase that went astray—after panicking because I’d missed my flight, my mistakes started piling up, so that, too, was my fault.

And not because of customer service, which was great. Well, okay, they made one mistake (heads up, Delta: you do not, in fact, have an agent in Santa Marta; that was a round trip taxi to the airport I wasted), but generally they were excellent, both on the phone and in person.  They even got me to Santa Marta on another airline, which took a bit of finagling with how tight the time was. And one sainted woman I talked to on the phone, Lou or Louie or something, really went above and beyond when El Gringo Estupido was trying to fight his way through the bureaucracy of three different airlines to track down his suitcase in a foreign country where he didn’t speak the language. Bless her.  Even the baggage guy Lou managed to tree for me stayed on the line while I made sure that, yes, it checked out, my suitcase was THERE.

And not for the cancelled flight that forced me to spend the night in Bogota on the 15th instead of going home; that was a mechanical issue. It was probably them being over-cautious, but if I’m traveling at a ground speed of 550 MPH 39,000 feet in the air, being over-cautious seems like kind of a good thing.

And not for the delayed flight the next day that caused me to miss my connection on the 16th and required me to stay an extra day in Atlanta instead of going home.  I don’t know what caused it, or if it was preventable; these things happen.  Yeah, it was annoying, but hardly unforgivable.

And not for the idiotic policy of making you go through security, then customs, then security again that resulted in 12 trips through security* in three days: that’s TSA, or customs, or the airport, or some combination; but that is no more Delta’s fault than the intestinal bug I picked up in Santa Marta that, as you might guess, made the travel experience even more enjoyable.

No, I hate them for the godawful, horrid, grating promo video they make you watch at the start of every flight to advertise themselves. OMG.  If I had thought it would shut it up, I’d have ripped out the screen with my teeth by the fourth time I saw it.  Why would they torture people like that?  Why?  Why?  Whoever decided to do that to a stressed-out traveler is going to a special place in Hell along with people who abandon cats and the designers of pop-up adds on cell phone apps.

Other than the travel, I had a great time.  And thanks once more to my niece and travel agent Lynette Brown who held my hand through the ordeal, and would have preserved my sanity if there were anything left to preserve.

It’s good to be home.

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*It would have been only 11 except that TSA in Bogota and TSA in Atlanta have different ideas about how to deal with the oddity of someone trying to bring something from the duty-free shop past security.