As most readers likely know, Delta’s operation has completely melted down over the past 4 or 5 days. Many airlines (and IT departments throughout the country and maybe world?) were impacted by an incorrect update on Microsoft Windows machines from cybersecurity vendor Cyberstrike. So while Friday was a mess of a day for many people traveling, nearly all airlines were mostly recovered by Saturday, with only Delta having significant problems over the weekend and into early this week. A few of my family and friends were caught up in the mess and I thought I would share our experiences

150 Camp Counselors Sleeping In The Airport

My son is a camp counselor for our church and he goes to a different place each week. Last week, he was in San Francisco, and he and a group of 150 counselors were scheduled to fly from Sacramento to Salt Lake City on Saturday around 5pm, on Delta. They got to the airport a little after noon on Saturday and waited… and waited… I was monitoring FlightAware for their inbound aircraft and I was thinking it was 50/50 at best that they were going to make it. Around 9pm, sure enough, their flight was cancelled. They even made the local news

Many of them hadn’t eaten any real food all day, because they were all pre-security (because they were told to stay together) and all there was were vending machines. I finally convinced my son to stay with my sister (who lives nearby) so he at least didn’t have to sleep at the airport. But the rest of his group slept at the airport Saturday AND Sunday before they finally were able to charter a bus on Monday

Missed Connection From London

A friend and former coworker reached out to me as well. She and her family of 4 were flying back (on Delta!) from London on Friday. Their flight from London to New York JFK was delayed, which caused them to miss their onward connection to Cincinnati. Delta told them they couldn’t get on a flight until MONDAY (3 days later!) and would not cover any hotels or meals. They ended up finding an obscenely expensive one-way rental car and drove through the night to get back home. Because they were flying out from the UK, I advised her that EU261 (technically UK261) should apply and they should get all their expenses reimbursed including car rental, gas, the hotel they booked on the way and meals, PLUS £520 in compensation. They are still working that out with Delta, but as of yet they haven’t heard anything.

Delta Won’t Fly The Flight… EVEN WITH The Plane Already There

Here’s another story shared from a friend of mine that was sent to me.

I was flying with my family of 6 on Monday from Cincinnati to Oakland, with a connection in Atlanta. The flight from Cincinnati to Atlanta went off without a hitch, and the plane was even the SAME one that was scheduled to fly the leg from Atlanta to Oakland. When we got out into the gate are, the pilot was there along with the flight attendants, but the flight was delayed by about 90 minutes. Turns out the first officer was not there yet – he was flying in from Tallahassee and his flight had been delayed. The captain said that they should definitely fly out because both she and the first officer were just starting their legs, so there was no real risk of anyone timing out.

So we went over to The Club ATL to hang out, and after waiting on a waitlist 36 deep, made it into the lounge for a bit. I was monitoring FlightAware, and the flight from Tallahassee to Atlanta (that was in theory bringing the first officer to Atlanta) kept getting delayed but did eventually take off. But a little bit later, around 930pm, we got official notice from Delta that our flight from Atlanta to Oakland was cancelled.

So we hurried out of the lounge, but the line to get into the Delta Sky Club was out the door, and the line for Delta customer service was similarly long (if not longer). But I was able to find a friendly gate agent running the gate for a Delta flight to Seoul Korea that was not doing anything and willing to help. The gate agent got 2 of us confirmed on a flight to San Jose (California) but couldn’t get the other 4. She suggested heading over to the E Concourse to the San Jose gate to see if the gate agent there could help.

When we got there, we waited in (another) super long line to talk to that gate agent. When I finally got to 2nd in line, the gate agent made a loud announcement that “If you’re trying to get on standby on this flight, I can’t help you – you have to go to the help desk”. But we stayed in line (since we had 2 confirmed seats) and we were able to ask if the 2 of us were on the flight (they were). Then I asked about standby – we had agreed that we weren’t going to split up the family, so finally the gate agent was able to hit some buttons and get us added to the standby list, but we were numbers 19 through 22.

I thought for sure there was no chance – with ALL of the people that had misconnected in Atlanta over the weekend (not to mention the entire manifest of our recently cancelled flight to Oakland), SURELY there would not be very many open seats. We waited as everyone boarded. We had agreed to not even have the 2 people with confirmed seats board since we would only board if all 6 of us could go. She started clearing standby passengers and the gate area started emptying out. Finally she looked at me, paused (for dramatic effect!) and called our names. We made it! Thank you Jayla!

We even were in Comfort+ and I even had a bulkhead (10D) with unlimited legroom! The flight had several open seats (at least 10 that I saw – the lady in row 13 had the entire row to herself!), and I’m sure there were plenty of people that would have wanted to be on that flight. Goes to show you how much of a mess Delta’s operation was this past week that they couldn’t get that flight full with people trying to fly to the Bay Area but I’m glad there was room for us.

Sure, we had to take a 45 minute $86 Uber from SJC to our hotel in Oakland where we didn’t get in until 230am (Pacific!), but we were grateful to even have made it. At the airport, I had been looking at the various flight options, even on other airlines since we had booked the tickets with our Capital One Venture X so I knew we had some Venture X trip delay insurance, but there was nothing. I view this as a literal miracle, since if we hadn’t gotten on that flight, I’m not sure we would have gotten there at all on Tuesday either, and our entire vacation would have been just about ruined.

Any stories from Delta’s weeklong dumpster fire? Leave them in the comments below

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