spikyone

I was traveling to EZE in early this month and had booked the D1 suites on A330-900neo JFK-EZE. Unfortunately my connecting flight to JFK was delayed then cancelled (actually tried to book a last minute ticket to EWR on UA to make the flight, but that also got cancelled), so we were rebooked via ATL on DL101 ATL-EZE the next day.

This is where things get interesting. The ATL-EZE flight was first delayed 2 hours due to a missing FO (reserve pilot apparently lived 2 hours away and had to drive to ATL). We boarded 2 hours late at 11:30pm, pushed back and sat on the taxiway for a good 30 minutes. They then announced that the only runway that could accommodate our weight was closed (I'm guessing 27R), despite the ATL-ICN flight having just taken off 30 minutes prior on 27R. This led to another 12 hour delay with lyft/hotel vouchers and rescheduled DL 101 at 11:30AM. We were ~35 hours late getting into Buenos Aires and actually had to scrap a whole side trip to Patagonia (the airport we were flying into was shutting down a few days later and it didn't make sense to fly there for <48 hours).

While I get that weather delays, sick pilots, etc can't be anticipated, it seems odd that a reserve pilot would be 2 hours away at such a major hub (ATL) and that Delta operations didn't anticipate which runway was needed/planned to have it open before boarding/pushing back from the gate. If the reserve pilot had arrived 30 minutes earlier, or perhaps if operations had reached out to ATL ground ops letting them know they'd need this runway, we could've still salvaged most of this trip. I actually listened to the LiveATC recordings and apparently they looked into reopening 27R for us before the original pilots timed out, but there was already too much work underway.

We were offered 20k miles for the delay proactively, though wondering if that seems appropriate. Also wondering if anyone has had experience getting a partial refund or reimbursements (tickets were ~$4K one way in refundable D1 and our connecting flights scheduled for ~24 hours after our original scheduled arrival were about ~$900).

tennessetom

Getting reimbursement if you actually flew is very difficult, 20,000 miles is worth about 200 so in my opinion it is too low but might sound like a lot to some, I have taken a new tact with delta which is to write and ask for something over the top but doable, in your case I would have asked for 100,000 miles, figure it as valued at 1000 or half the outbound, as long as there were no issues on the return you really don’t have a claim there, now I am DM but this normally gets me a phone call on the call I would probably settle for 50,000 miles and a 200 credit or something along those lines

spikyone

Thanks for your thoughts!

I think 50k miles and $200 travel voucher (or some combination) seems more reasonable. Lost status with DL last year so expect it will probably end up being less.

FlyerAVL

What does their Contract of Carriage say? It is a US airline flying out of the US. They are only required to do what is in that. Unless Argentina has some sort of airline passenger protections like EC/UK261 then all you are entitled to is what is in the CoC. Until we have a US version of EC/UK261 that is all you get.