Yuck–have never had that happen to me on UAL.
Do you have a twitter account? First you send out a tweet like this: (Feel free to cut and paste.)
@Delta @Deltanewsroom @DeltaAssist @Delta airlines scams passengers by changing nonstop flight to layover! #Deltascams #DeltaBaitandswitch
and then you get all your friends to retweet it. Best case is get some famous person with a few million followers to retweet it (like @AlecBaldwin although he doesn’t have that many followers ) , and then bingo it has gone viral!! It gets the attention of news media and certainly gets the attention of Delta public relations. Maybe somebody in the media decides it is worth researching to see if they are actually doing this as a strategy. A news story would make Delta look bad.
My sisters flew Delta from Cleveland to Hartford in October. Their flight here had one stop…in Detroit…no big deal.
Their return was supposed to be a non-stop. But wait. Delta discontinued the non-stop on weekends…so they had one stop…in Atlanta. Really…Hartford-Atlanta-Cleveland. Oh and they had a three hour layover in Atlanta too. I told them to whine…see if they could get some compensation. One sister is excellent at this…they got nothing. Not even a free drink. So what was supposed to be a 2 hour trip turned into an all day event.
Alas…no twitter account.Maybe I can convince a friend…
Question: were the tix purchased directly through Delta or a third party? (like Expedia for example?)
Really want to know. I found if I bought a third party ticket then all bets were off when dealing with Delta.
My sisters purchased directly from Delta…no third party.
One time I had a flight home from San Jose on United scheduled with change in Denver. A hailstorm caused them to close the Denver airport. I stood in line at the airport for 2 -1/2 hours to talk to an agent to rebook my flight. For about an hour of that, until my cell phone ran out of juice, I was on hold on the United 800 number. By the time I got through the line, the alternate flights that would have gotten me home that day had already departed. There is simply no excuse for an airline not having the ability to surge the capacity of their central reservation system when problems happen.
While Delta service is far from perfect, they handle problems much better, IME. They would have just rebooked everyone, handed out the boarding passes, then let the gate agents deal with the few people for whom that didn’t work.
I’ve had the same problem with american. Booked trip to Hawaii from Baltimore with one stop each way, using miles. About a month before we left they changed us to a 2 stop flight on way home, 7 hours earlier than our original flight. I have probably spent 2 hours trying to convince them to change us to a flight with only one stop. Of course no mileage tickets are available for that option now… But there were probably others almost a year ago when I picked flights. They offered to refund my miles, but what then… I pay big bucks because we are close to the date? To make matters worse, leaving there was a mechanical difficulty on plane, we had to go to another airport, and wound up with three flights then also, and got here 6 hours later than planned… Oh well… At least the weather is great here.
Eek I have a Delta flight in two weeks- non-stop to Florida.
Booked directly through Delta. Will let you know if it goes awry. I’m going with my sister who will rip them a new one and get us a free vacation in Hawaii by the time she’s done 
I’m usually pretty successful “negotiating” after bad things like this, but airlines simply don’t budge. We were lucky to even get to Hawaii the same day when our plane had difficulties. They just abandoned us at the gate. Fortunately I called customer service ASAP, and found us something.
Romani, aren’t you flying from a Delta hub? It’s the rest of us suckers who get the shaft. My airport isn’t a hub for anyone. I have a stop everywhere I fly…except Baltimore. Oh…and I had a non-stop to Orlando.
And we pay more to fly because ours is a smaller airport.
Because I flew with O2, they made sure that I was able to fly the day after AA cancelled our flight instead of several days later (some with one or more stops instead of nonstop) that they told many of the other passengers. I told them my docs really didn’t want me to have stops and wanted me to be on the most direct routing possible.
I’m flying from dtw. I don’t fly often enough to know what airports are hubs 
Just flew today on DL. Was able to change to an earlier flight at no charge due to the impending inclement weather . They then oversold the flight we were changed to, and by then the temps had warmed a smidge in my arrival city, so for a millisecond DH and I considered giving up our seats for $600 vouchers, and flying back on the flight we were originally booked on. Didn’t, but thought about it for a brief moment. What was annoying was that they were now charging for almost every movie or tv show in the seatback entertainment system. Really? They have to charge $1 to watch a tv show? Thats just cheap. And leaves a bad taste in the passengers mouth. Wonder how much they really make by doing that.
Here’s the kicker. Gentleman I chatted with on line was flying home to Toronto from SFO… via Atlanta. Really??? Thats a LONG day.
Detroit is one of Delta’s hubs.
We fly out of Bradley in Hartford. Not a hub for anyone…but it’s convenient relatively speaking.
http://www.delta.com/content/dam/delta-www/pdfs/route-maps/us-route-map.pdf Was just getting this link to DLs route map. Yes, Detroit is a hub. Got diverted there a year ago when the toidys stopped working on our flight!
Various members of my family have had this happen 4 separate times now on Delta. All booked directly w Delta. Would gladly choose another airline, but they’re the only one flying non-stop on our routes…well sometimes.
“One time I had a flight home from San Jose on United scheduled with change in Denver. A hailstorm caused them to close the Denver airport. I stood in line at the airport for 2 -1/2 hours to talk to an agent to rebook my flight. For about an hour of that, until my cell phone ran out of juice, I was on hold on the United 800 number. By the time I got through the line, the alternate flights that would have gotten me home that day had already departed. There is simply no excuse for an airline not having the ability to surge the capacity of their central reservation system when problems happen.”
If the Denver airport was closed, then some planes that were stranded in Denver were out of service and that reverberates throughout the system, so of course they didn’t have the full capacity to fly you back. I can agree it’s frustrating to be on hold for an hour, but adding more people on the reservation system isn’t going to add a single additional seat for you to fly in.
Honestly, as a frequent flyer, things like this happen frequently enough that they don’t even rise to notable anymore.
Adding more people to the reservation system would have meant that I could do something more productive and pleasant with my time than standing in line (hungry and otherwise uncomfortable) for 2-1/2 hours. It may very well have gotten me home sooner–several flights going in the right direction left while I was standing in line.
There is no excuse not to increase the capacity/automation of their reservation system. The same people can handle problems wherever they occur, and as you say, such problems do happen frequently.
We flew United from BWI to SFO this weekend, and the flight was delayed for about three hours for a maintenance problem–we were sure they’d cancel it (they took everybody off the plane), but they didn’t. Once it left, no problems. Afterwards, we received e-mails offering us compensation for the inconvenience–7500 miles for my wife (gold) and 5000 for me (silver).