[czaz21]

My mother lives in Japan and purchased a round trip business class ticket to visit my family who lives in Syracuse NY. She purchased business class because it offers a bed and, she has heart problems at 78. I left Syracuse at 7am to drive her back to JFK and we arrived at 1:30pm because of heavy traffic in the NYC area. I knew roughly how long it would take because I picked her up. Her flight was leaving at 2:10pm. We asked a customer agent for assistance with the check-in kiosk, he literally chewed us out for being late. I explained that we got held up in traffic, he said if you left earlier you would have been here on time. Then referred us to row 2, who referred us to Dawn in re-booking. All of this taking us until 2pm. I feel that Delta agents should have made special considerations and taken her to the flight instead of wasting time referring us from place to place.

Dawn in rebooking also tells us we are too late and they can either put her on a flight tomorrow to Tokyo or fly her to Detroit and so she can spend the night and then fly her to Tokyo the next day and she would have to pay $1003 for economy one-way to Japan. We ask for alternative options. She said that was all and could not check with other airlines for a flight that same day.

We walked down to China Airlines they had a flight leaving at 4pm to Osaka but knew there was a flight at 6pm directly to Tokyo at terminal 7 via All Nippon Airways and were able to obtain a seat for the same day. Hats off to them.

My complaint about Delta is their Customer Service and that it is inferior They could get her on the plane if they wanted, we were there 40 mins before departure and could have an agent run us through. This is NYC and traffic happens so this should be SOP. The agents do not want to hear any explanations and the $2000 my mother paid for the return business class ticket is lost with no partial refund, voucher, etc. What a scam, Delta is the worst airline