Complaints about Delta Airlines
There have been numerous complaints in the Irish media about the
appalling treatment of passengers travelling between the US and Ireland.
Overbooked flights - tails of elderly people and young families who
arrived early for their flight, checked in, their baggage was accepted
but no seat number allocated. Three or four hours
later they find that they are bumped off the flight at the gate.
Many people had to sleep at airports overnight until the next flight -
others were re-routed to other European countries - and some of these
people stated that they had to buy tickets on other airlines to get back
home. One person had their baggage flown on a
different flight after they were re-routed themselves and had to pay
almost $200 equivalent to the handling agent at their home airport to
get their baggage back.
These do not appear to be isolated incidents and Delta seems to have
been mistreating passengers on international routes for some time.
It appears that Delta systematically overbooks flights to Ireland on an
ongoing basis. There is no excuse for this, as most
full long haul flights are fully ticketed and paid for several days
before the flight departs - i.e. Delta has been paid for all the seats
on the aircraft. The only justification for
airlines to overbook is where they accept telephone or other
reservations without full payment of the fare at the time of booking -
and statistically they find that not everybody who reserves ends up
buying a ticket and showing up for a flight. This would not
appear to be the case here.
Source: Liveline on
RTE Radio 1 (Thursday November 8 show).
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