Delta Airlines Blames Crew Rest For Traveler Woes; Union Disputes Claim

Travel plans for thousands of Delta passengers went up in the air last week after the airline canceled close to 3,500 flights following a bout of severe weather that hit its hub city of Atlanta.

The severe weather hit the region on Wednesday but delays and cancelations lasted until Sunday, with passengers stranded for days at airports. On Sunday, the airline said in a statement posted to its website that “availability of flight crews to operate within federally mandated crew rest and duty day guidelines” was prompting delays and cancelations.

However, the Delta pilot’s union hit back against the assertion that limited availability of flight crews contributed to last week’s irregular operations policy, or IROP for short. Delta defines an IROP as a delay or cancelation to a flight for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to weather or crew rest.

“Statements covered in the press about flight crew unavailability contributing to this IROP are inaccurate,” Bill Bartels, Delta MEC chairman, wrote in a letter to pilots on Tuesday.

“This may have been a miscommunication or misinterpretation in the heat of the moment over the weekend as press reports were developed apparently from information on the Delta News Hub (Corporate Communications),” Bartels wrote. “Pilots and flight attendants proactively attempted multiple contacts with Crew Scheduling, went days without receiving Crew Scheduling or Tracking contact, were placed on hold (in some cases for over six hours), and were camped out in crew lounges and airports resembling refugee camps.”

Delta passengers, on the other hand, described long wait lines at ticket counters, hours- long wait times to reach a Delta representative on the phone and a lack of urgency in Delta’s response to the situation.

Laura Spanski, an Atlanta resident who works in the IT industry, was supposed to be in Boston for an overnight trip. Instead, she racked up over $600 in extra hotel fees. Spanski flew out of Atlanta on Wednesday and was supposed to be on a flight back on Thursday. Her flight back to Atlanta was delayed for four hours before the airline said it was canceled. She was rescheduled twice and on Sunday she was still in Boston.

She said she tried everything and even looked at flights going to nearby airports like Birmingham, Knoxville or even Savannah.

“Seriously, you can’t get there from here,” Spanski told Patch.

Spanski said she received no notification or text message from Delta about the delays and described customer service representatives as being “non invested” in the issue. She said Delta was acting like it was any other day.

Another Georgia resident, Lester Sine, said he was due to fly back after a business trip from Austin to Atlanta on Thursday. Sine said he got to the airport at 6:30 a.m. for his flight that was due to leave four hours later. When he got to the airport he found that his flight was canceled and went to the ticket counter, which was flooded with passengers. He was rebooked on a three-segment flight for Friday that left from Austin to Houston to New Orleans and finally to Atlanta. The first two segments on his flight were United, which were on time, but when he got to New Orleans he was stuck.

Sine said he doesn’t understand why Delta put him back into their system after he was able to fly United with no problems.

“It was an illusion that you were moving but you were not moving where you were supposed to,” he said.

Sine’s flight from New Orleans that was supposed to leave at 1:30 was delayed until 8:30 before finally being canceled. He was told to go to the ticket counter outside security and saw a line out the door. It took him two hours to get to the counter. Ultimately, Sine decided to get a rental car and finally got back to Atlanta at about 2 a.m. Saturday.

He said there was a lack of information and not enough customer service agents. Sine said he was told he wouldn’t be given compensation for a hotel since the delay was weather-related and the only email he received from Delta was a reminder to check in for his original flight.

“They should have known, they strung all those people along and then boom they dropped them,” he said.

Sine said he saw a flight at New Orleans parked at the gate for Detroit but there was no crew to fly it. Another passenger, Liz Wood, who was traveling Saturday from Reagan International Airport to Spokane, Washington, with a connection in Salt Lake City, Utah, told Patch her first flight was delayed because they did not have any flight attendants.

A Delta spokesperson told Patch he hadn’t heard any stories about passengers not receiving text or email notifications. He said the Fly Delta app was reflecting delays and cancelations and said whether someone was receiving text or email notifications could depend on a lot of things, for example, whether that person had cellphone service in the airport.

He also said the airline does not offer complimentary hotel rooms if the situation is weather-related or a “force majeure,” that is an event such as severe weather or political unrest, which is out of the airline’s control.

When asked about the lack of customer service and the long lines reported at ticket counters, the spokesman directed Patch to information posted on Delta’s news site and said crews were working around the clock.

The pilot’s union strongly asserted there was no availability problem but rather a connectivity problem.

BuzzFeed news reports Delta CEO Ed Bastian acknowledged the problem in an internal memo that was reviewed by the news organization.

"Our recovery was hampered by a lack of available seats to accommodate customers as well as a failure of crew tracking systems to adequately position our people to do their jobs," Bastian wrote.

Employees that spoke to BuzzFeed said they were unable to log into the airline’s scheduling system and faces hours-long wait times to get through to scheduling on the phone.

Patch reached out to Delta for comment regarding the letter sent by the head of the pilot’s union but hasn’t heard back.

“Regarding the root causes of the problem, there are both simple and complex potential explanations,” Bartels wrote. “Several days of perspective and analysis will be necessary to fully evaluate the failure points.”

>>>Read the full letter sent by Bartels here.

Image Credit: Jessica McGowan/ Getty Images News/ Getty Images