[jdevine]

Why I hope never to fly through JFK, Detroit, or with Delta Airlines again…

A week before I left Spain, I hurt my foot in Morocco. At first, I thought it was a really bad foot cramp, but it never seemed to get better. Walking the streets of Granada a few days before my departure probably didn’t help my situation either. But it wasn’t until I began my journey back to the States that things got really bad. When I woke up the morning I was due to fly out of Spain I noticed my foot was swollen and it was extremely difficult to walk. I’ve broken my foot before and figured that was probably what happened. There was nothing I could do in Spain so I headed to the airport and decided I’d go to the doctor when I got home.

My friends dropped me off at the airport in Málaga and my boyfriend, Nick, carried my luggage. I made it through all the nasty lines and to my departure terminal by limping very slowly. By the time I arrived at the departure gate, my foot was very swollen and I could no longer bear any weight on it. That's when things started getting really bad.

I hopped to my seat and was in an emergency exit row on my flight from Málaga to New York (which was probably illegal since my foot was most likely broken) but at least I had some room to put my leg up on some bags and ice my foot. I asked the flight attendant to order me a wheelchair while I was still on the plane so it would be waiting for me when I got off at JFK. She assured me that she would.

When I got off the plane, there wasn’t a wheelchair waiting for me. We had to go through customs so there was no information desk to try and reorder another wheelchair either. I hopped on one foot in line while Nick attempted to ask the airport employee directing passengers to the correct lines for a wheelchair. She yelled at him and told him to stay in line and wait until he got through customs. Since I couldn’t walk, we were already at the back of a very long line and I thought I was going to faint from the pain. A half an hour later I hopped by her on one foot and she noticed how bad it actually was, but instead of helping me she sighed and said "wow, that looks bad" and did nothing.

We turned the corner and entered the actual customs room. The line was at least a mile deep with people. I asked another airport employee for a wheelchair. She yelled at me for not pre-ordering one, which I explained that I had done and she told me to go sit down. After calling three times for a wheelchair for me (and two international flight arrivals later), she told me that I should have refused to get off the plane until I saw a wheelchair outside the door and scolded me in front of hundreds of people for not knowing any better. An hour later a wheelchair arrived.

A teeny, tiny Puerto Rican woman pushed me to the heads of lines and through the airport to my next departure gate. Nick carried our belongings and followed behind us. As soon as we got into the Delta section of the terminal, I went to the Delta desk and showed them my boarding pass and passport and informed them again that I would be needing wheelchair assistance on my trip. Since we had a few hours to kill, she dropped me off at a restaurant with Nick and showed him where to order my next wheelchair.

After lunch, we sat at our next gate for an hour or so until an announcement that our gate was changed came on the PA. Nick flagged down an employee who just dropped a woman off at the gate next to us and asked if she could push me to the gate at the end of the terminal. She reluctantly said yes. Since our flight was still not boarding when we arrived, the wheelchair pusher had to drop me off in a chair and leave. We sat for many hours and it started getting close to our departure time. People started getting nervous and were trying to ask why there hadn’t been any announcements of delays and the Delta employees refused to acknowledge anyone’s existence. Many people were extremely upset.

Eventually they announced that we would be boarding soon, but would need to take a bus to our plane. They forgot to get me another wheelchair. The last time I requested a wheelchair it took an hour to get one. We didn’t want to miss our connecting flight so I just hopped on one foot in line and down a ramp to a bus outside. When our bus arrived at the plane, they wouldn’t let us off the bus. We watched the baggage people outside staring at each other in confusion. After a half an hour, people started getting really antsy on the bus and started complaining about the heat (all windows were up and no a/c was on). A guy with a fluorescent traffic vest got on the bus and told us that the pilot was missing some paperwork and that he and the crew just left moments before we pulled up to go and get the paperwork and would be right back. He assured us we would be boarding the plane soon. He had the driver turn the a/c on and left us on the bus.

Another 30 minutes or so went by and the guy with the traffic vest got back on our bus. This time he said too much time went by and that there were restrictions preventing the original crew to assist with our flight so they were currently looking for another crew for our flight. He said that he felt bad for us, suggested that we complain online to Delta and ask for refunds, and then told us he would be taking us back to the airport because it wasn’t fair for us to sit on the bus any longer. He said we would probably have to wait for the Nashville Delta crew to land at JFK before we could leave, but that he wasn’t sure.

We got back to the airport and there was still no wheelchair for me. I struggled to hop up the ramp and was the last one to arrive at the gate. I stopped for a second a few feet after the door to catch my breath because I felt like I was going to faint from the excruciating pain. A Delta employee came up to me and yelled at me for being in the way and told me to move. I struggled to hop away and she asked me if I needed a wheelchair. I said yes and then she yelled at me for not pre-ordering one. I told her I had several times and hopped away from her as fast as I could with tears in my eyes. She never ordered me one either.

After I safely made it to a chair, I asked Nick to go up to the counter again and make sure I had a reservation for a wheelchair for whenever we were going to be rescheduled to depart. He stood at the counter for at least a half an hour trying to get the employees’ attention. No one paid any attention to him or anyone else at the counter for that matter. When one of the employees finally acknowledged him, he yelled at him for not pre-ordering a wheelchair for me, which we had done multiple times prior to that (including once earlier at that same desk) and told him to sit down and that he’d call for one.

Another hour or so went by and a wheelchair never arrived, nor did Delta announce anything about the problem with our flight. People started getting really nervous since many of us had connecting flights we were in danger of missing. Nick tried again to talk to the people at the counter, but they refused to talk to anyone. He found an outlet to plug in his iPhone and tried to pull up information about the delay at JFK, our flight from Detroit to Madison, and/or other ways to get to Madison from JFK. The only thing he found out was that our only chance to get to Madison that night was from Detroit and we were probably going to miss our connection.

I sat and watched the people behind the counter ignore the frustrated passengers trying to communicate with them. Instead of apologizing for the delays or trying to communicate information with the people, they laughed and joked with each other, took breaks, and bragged about when they were getting off of work. A foreign man (Eastern European, I think) walked up to the counter and politely interrupted their banter and asked them for information about his flight. They laughed at him and made fun of him to his face. He walked off and they continued to make fun of him for the next 5 minutes or so at the desk in front of everyone. It was extremely unprofessional!

At some point, we heard that the Nashville crew had arrived at JFK and were told we would be boarding soon. Of course, my wheelchair still hadn’t arrived. We waited and waited and there were no further announcements about our flight. Maybe an hour later I had to go to the bathroom and I still didn’t have a wheelchair. I asked Nick to go up to the counter again. This time the guy remembered him and didn’t know why I hadn’t received a wheelchair yet. He assured him he would order another and told him to go sit back down.

Eventually I flagged down an airport employee pushing an empty wheelchair and asked if he was looking for me. He came over by me, but said nothing. Instead he impatiently shifted from foot to foot and kept staring at his phone. It was late and seemed like many airport employees were getting off of work. One such female employee walked by the guy with my wheelchair and asked him what he was still doing there. He mumbled something about the Delta employee who ordered me a wheelchair and rolled his eyes. The girl told him he should have told the guy to “suck it” and made a jerking motion to her imaginary penis. This obviously offended the passenger sitting across from me. Five minutes later the guy with my wheelchair told me he would leave the wheelchair with me, but he was off of work and he walked off.

Shortly thereafter an announcement was made that we would be boarding soon, but needed to take a bus to our plane again. I hopped into the wheelchair and Nick carefully pushed me through the line and down the ramp to the bus. When we got to the end of the ramp, an airport employee yelled at Nick for pushing me in the wheelchair. I told her that the other guy said he was off of work and walked off. She didn’t seem too surprised and let us on the bus even though we broke a rule.

As people were boarding the plane, the flight attendant was getting increasingly more upset as passengers struggled to fit their possessions in the overhead bins. A foreign man in the front row didn’t have a seat in front of him to put his backpack underneath so she snatched it away from him menacingly and threw it in one of the bins. When she walked down the aisle to close the bin doors, she arrived at the one above my row and started furiously punching one of the bags that didn’t fit with her fists. The passengers silently watched in horror. Then she got to the bin with one of the young Jewish camp kids’ guitar in it and scolded him because she couldn’t get the door closed. He told her he couldn’t check it because it was in a soft case and she told him if he couldn’t get the door closed he was going to have to leave it behind. She proceeded down the aisle slamming the rest of the bin doors as she went. Fortunately the boy and the stranger next to him worked together to shove the guitar in the bin and when the door finally latched, the passengers clapped to show their support and relief.

When the flight attendant finished slamming the overhead bin doors she made an announcement on the PA. She apologized for the confusion with our flight and said that the airport staff handled our situation unacceptably. She advised each and every one of us to write a complaint letter to Delta. Then the pilot came on and apologized again. He said we were in this situation because there was no plane for the crew to fly, which caused such a long delay. I thought that was a weird statement since we were on the same plane they bused us out to several hours earlier. I don’t think he wasn’t informed of our earlier dilemma.

After the flight attendant calmed down, I asked her to order me a wheelchair to be waiting at the gate in Detroit. She said she already noticed that I needed one and had already ordered me one. I also informed her of our connecting flight problem and she assured me she would communicate that information to Detroit and that we would receive additional information when we got off the plane.

When our flight landed in Detroit, we were informed that all the passengers with connecting flights had missed them and to speak with the agent at the desk outside. When I got to the door of the plane, I saw that there was no wheelchair waiting for me. I was told to keep moving and had to hop on one foot to the Delta desk down the hallway. When I arrived at the desk, there was still no wheelchair for me and I really had to go to the bathroom. The desk agent gave those of us that missed our connecting flights hotel and breakfast vouchers and tickets for our flights the next day and sent us on our way. I told him that I had ordered a wheelchair and he said there was nothing he could do about it and advised me to sit and wait for one. I told him I had to go to the bathroom really badly and with the help of some other passengers who spoke up in my defense convinced him to let my boyfriend push me in a nearby abandoned wheelchair to the bathroom.

The next morning the front desk clerk at the Days Inn (where Delta put us up for the night) called to have a wheelchair waiting for me at the shuttle drop off at the airport in Detroit. When we arrived, there was no wheelchair waiting. I hopped on one foot inside and spoke with the first airport employee I found. She yelled at me to keep moving. I explained to her that I ordered a wheelchair and there wasn’t one waiting for me and I couldn’t walk. She told me it wasn’t her problem and to keep moving. She directed me up the stairs and told me to wait in line in first class. I told her again that I couldn’t walk and that was too far away. She snapped at me to keep moving and tears welled up in my eyes.

As soon as I got upstairs, I talked to a woman directing people in line for Delta flights and explained that I had a Delta flight, but that I needed a wheelchair and that I was in a lot of pain. She told me she couldn’t help me and didn’t know where to direct me, but suggested I either stand in the very long line in front of me or find someone with a walkie-talkie and ask them. I saw a woman with a walkie-talkie pushing a guy in a wheelchair and I hopped over to her. She said she was busy but she might be able to help me and then she walked off with no further words. I sent my boyfriend to wait in line to check-in so we wouldn’t miss another flight. Meanwhile I tried to hop around and find someone to order me a wheelchair.

Finally an airport employee with an empty wheelchair walked by me and I flagged him down. He came over to me and I explained my situation to him as tears streamed down my cheeks. He asked me my name, punched it into some hand-held device, and told me my name didn’t come up on the wheelchair list. He apologized to me and said that he couldn’t help me and that I probably wouldn’t be able to get a wheelchair that day because my name wasn’t on the list and told me that I should have pre-ordered one. At that point, I started balling. I sobbingly explained that I’d pre-ordered one on every leg of my trip and that I couldn’t understand why no one was willing to help me and begged him to tell me who I needed to talk to in order to get help. After several glares by sympathetic travelers, the employee gave in and pushed me in the vacant wheelchair over to the first class line for Delta flights.

The wheelchair guy spoke with a woman behind the counter for first class passengers on Delta flights. She told him to have my boyfriend check-in at the self-service machines with his credit card. At that point, Nick was only five travelers away from the front of the line. He tried to explain to the woman that we missed our flight last night and that Delta booked us the flights that day so his credit card wouldn’t work at the self-service machine, but she wouldn’t listen. Instead she told him to get out of the line and try the machine anyway. When the machine didn’t work, we went back to the same woman only moments later and she told us we had to go to the back of the line and wait to check-in (even though he left the front of the line per her demand). I told the wheelchair pusher that was unacceptable and he took us over to a nicer Delta desk agent who gave us temporary boarding passes and told us we needed to speak to another desk agent at our departure gate. At that time, the wheelchair pusher said he needed to go and told Nick to push me the rest of the way.

We arrived at our departure gate early and the desk agent there assigned us seats and printed us boarding passes even though she was the agent for a different flight. We thanked her and ate breakfast in the nearby restaurant with our Delta breakfast vouchers. We finally thought that was the end of our problems, but we were wrong.

When we came out of the restaurant, we noticed a different flight was at our departure gate. We checked the monitors and saw that our flight had been moved to a different gate and were surprised they hadn’t made any announcements about the gate change on the PA. We quickly went to the correct gate and waited. There were no desk agents there, but the flight information was posted so we continued to wait. Shortly thereafter, the crew showed up, but there were still no desk agents there. The crew began complaining that there were no agents at the desk and told all the people waiting in line to get their seats assigned that they couldn’t help them and didn’t know what was going on. Eventually the phone rang and I heard one of the crew members tell another crew member there had been a security breach in the airport and that was why there were no desk agents, but no announcements came on the PA pertaining to our flight delay. Instead of relaying any kind of information what-so-ever to the nervous passengers standing in line about the delay, the crew let everyone stand there confused and upset while each minute our flight was later and later.

Eventually a desk agent arrived and everyone boarded the plane. The crew apologized to the passengers and said there had been a security breach in the airport, but weren’t allowed to disclose further information. This seemed to satisfy everyone and the plane took off. I requested a wheelchair again and crossed my fingers for the last leg of the trip.

Finally when I arrived in Madison, there was a man with a wheelchair waiting for me at the door of the plane. I was extremely relieved. He wheeled me off to the baggage claim area while Nick went to fetch the car we left in the long-term parking lot. The man that pushed my wheelchair helped bring my luggage to the front of the airport while I called Urgent Care to make an appointment regarding my enormous, swollen foot. I was extremely thankful for the help of a kind airport employee.

Two hours later, I left my local Urgent Care office in a walking boot with crutches and a fractured foot, still in shock by the stunning absence of customer service at the Detroit Metro Airport and JFK International Airport and the astonishing lack of Delta Air Lines employee professionalism.

[PHXFlyer]

Wow, this is a small novel. You should quickly copyright this material as someone may steal it from you and use at as a screen play!

All humor aside though, it sounds like this was the trip from hell. I'm sure the inconveniences of the mis-connects and other seemingly minor bumps in the road must have seemed like gigantic potholes to you given your injury and the pain you were experiencing.

That's all I'm going to say about that for now however I do have a question for you. Did it not occur to you to go to an E.R. or Urgent Care while you were in Detroit? I can understand that you wanted to get out of Spain but if it were me I would have sought medical care at the first opportunity stateside which in your case was in DTW. You could have requested that Delta re-book you for a flight later in the day so that you could have your foot checked out. Just a thought.

[abutterfinger25]

jdevine:

I did not read through your whole dissertation here, but I do see some possible violations of one of our regulations, 14 CFR Part 382. As a passenger with a temporary disability, you are entitled to the same assistance as those with permanant ones. As such, as soon as you asked for a wheelchair, one should have met you at your arrival gate, taken you though customs and to your connection gate. It does not seem like this was done. I would suggest that you file a formal written complaint with my office at http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/problems.htm

I would like to mention a couple of things though

1 - while providing wheelchair assistance from an arrival gate to a connecting gate, carriers are not required to make a stop for food.

2 - carriers are not required to leave a wheelchair with a passenger when they get to the gate, but have to provide a wheelchair to the passenger when a subsequent request is made.

3 - when a passenger is assisted to the gate area, they need to reiterate their need for boarding assistance to the gate agents. Otherwise, those agents don't know who needs assistance.

EDIT:

One more thing, if you decide to procede with a complaint with DOT. Please include your flight information, dates, city pairs and flight numbers.

[jdevine]

My flight information for curiosity purposes. The times are not accurate due to delays:

• August 2, AGP to JFK / #163, 12:40 PM CEST / 3:25 PM EDT
• August 2, JFK to DTW / # 6357, 7:05 PM EDT / 9:47 PM EDT
• August 3, DTW to MSN / # 2403, 9:15 AM EDT / 9:33 AM

PHXFlyer: I can honestly say I didn't even think of going to the ER in Detroit. I was way too exhausted from my trip and just wanted to go home. I didn't arrive in Detroit until after 11 PM and went to sleep immediately after I got to the hotel. I woke up the next morning and took the 7 AM shuttle back to the airport. The Bloody Mary on Delta's tab made me feel a little better

abutterfinger25: I can assure you I sent the flight details in my complaint to Delta. Thank you for the Aviation Consumer Protection link. I immediately sent my complaint there. Unfortunately the site didn't accept my Word document with the details when I tried to attach it to the online form. The six sentence version of my story doesn't reflect the horror I experienced.

[PHXFlyer]

Originally Posted by jdevine

My flight information for curiosity purposes. The times are not accurate due to delays:

• August 2, AGP to JFK / #163, 12:40 PM CEST / 3:25 PM EDT
• August 2, JFK to DTW / # 6357, 7:05 PM EDT / 9:47 PM EDT
• August 3, DTW to MSN / # 2403, 9:15 AM EDT / 9:33 AM

PHXFlyer: I can honestly say I didn't even think of going to the ER in Detroit. I was way too exhausted from my trip and just wanted to go home. I didn't arrive in Detroit until after 11 PM and went to sleep immediately after I got to the hotel. I woke up the next morning and took the 7 AM shuttle back to the airport. The Bloody Mary on Delta's tab made me feel a little better

abutterfinger25: I can assure you I sent the flight details in my complaint to Delta. Thank you for the Aviation Consumer Protection link. I immediately sent my complaint there. Unfortunately the site didn't accept my Word document with the details when I tried to attach it to the online form. The six sentence version of my story doesn't reflect the horror I experienced.

I would just list the service failures in chronological order in as few words as pssible with a short sentence on either end describing your temporary disability and the pain and suffering you endured as a result of all of the misconnects and failure to provide wheelchair service.

Broke my foot in Spain but wanted to get home to seek medical attention but was in pain and foot visibly swollen causing me to limp.

1. Requested through FA wheelchair to meet my arriving flight xxx on xx/yy. No wheelchair was provided.

2. 2nd request for wheelchair in JFK through gate agent who dismissed my condition, waited xx minutes and no wheelchair provided....etc etc.

If you keep it short and to the point with minimal but relevant details I'm sure you can condense it down. Additionally you can post the word.doc to a blog (like blogger.com) and send both the DOT and Delta the link to the blog as well.

[rudybjr]

Flight attendants don't order wheelchairs, the ticket counter and gate agents do.

[PHXFlyer]

Originally Posted by rudybjr

Flight attendants don't order wheelchairs, the ticket counter and gate agents do.

If you had read the OP's post thoroughly the first wheelchair request was made to a FA. (Which was part of the problem since it wasn't ordered prior to departure at the counter or gate.)

Originally Posted by jdevine

I asked the flight attendant to order me a wheelchair while I was still on the plane so it would be waiting for me when I got off at JFK. She assured me that she would.

[Jetliner]

Originally Posted by rudybjr

Flight attendants don't order wheelchairs, the ticket counter and gate agents do.

So, when the plane door is opened and the skycaps are standing in the jetway, they don't tell them how many wheelchairs they have? Or if the skycap is late, they can't say something to the gate agent?

[Gromit801]

I don't know about all airlines, but with the one I usually fly, the FA can ask the Captain to pass along a request to the OPS room, asking for a wheelchair at the gate. It will work it's way to the CSA's at the counter if given enough time.

[abutterfinger25]

Originally Posted by jdevine

abutterfinger25: I can assure you I sent the flight details in my complaint to Delta. Thank you for the Aviation Consumer Protection link. I immediately sent my complaint there. Unfortunately the site didn't accept my Word document with the details when I tried to attach it to the online form. The six sentence version of my story doesn't reflect the horror I experienced.

It should accept word documents, or at least it is supposed to. You should get a response back from whichever analyst it was assigned to and you can then just sent it to that person via e-mail. Or you can just fax it to 202-366-9544

[abutterfinger25]

Originally Posted by rudybjr

Flight attendants don't order wheelchairs, the ticket counter and gate agents do.

The flight can call ahead. So if a request is made to a flight attendant, the flight attendant should notify the captain who then in turn, notifies the next station to have a wheelchair present.