Don't Fly Delta Unless You Want To Spend 30+ Hours To Get Across The U.S.

I used to fly on Delta a lot, but they've let me down time after time. And today they've let down my family leaving them in stranded in Minneapolis all day and having to fly two red-eyes on two nights in a row just to get from Oregon to Massachusetts.

What happened in this case, and in every other case, is that something happens to make the first leg of a flight late. This make you late for a connection. But over and over the situation has been such that if Delta held the connection for five minutes, the late arrivals could get on the flight. It's not as though Delta would be waiting for people who may or may not arrive at the airport. These are passengers within Delta's control. Delta knows where they are. Delta can even arrange for one of those electric carts in the airport to quickly get the passengers from one gate to another. They know exactly when they'll get there. So they know that if they wait just five minutes, they can get people DELTA CAUSED TO BE LATE onto their next flight.

On the other hand I fly Southwest a lot and have never encountered this problem. Southwest seems to have built extra time into their schedules. For example a flight that takes one hour will have a scheduled flight time of 70 minutes -- and this gives them some flexibility. But, however they do it, they are focused on doing a good job for their customers. So traveling on Southwest is a much better experience.

Delta get your act together. Taking more than 30 hours to fly someone across the U.S. is ridiculous!