Delta Fined Over Treatment Of Bumped Passengers

The Department of Transportation has fined Delta Air Lines $375,000 for the way it has handled involuntary bumps of passengers, although $200,000 of the fine will be forgiven if Delta goes forth and sins no more, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

The DOT’s consent decree (Chris Elliott has posted it) says that on some occasions Delta denied boarding to passengers without first asking for volunteers to accept compensation for giving up their seats, that it failed to give written notice to passengers who were  bumped involuntarily and that it didn’t compensate bumped passengers in a timely way.

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Delta Forced To Cancel Direct Nairobi Flights

Delta was supposed to start flying today between Atlanta and Nairobi, but didn’t. The new route has been nixed by the U.S. government, citing safety concerns.

The last-minute cancellation has caused something of a diplomatic incident in Kenya, where the U.S. ambassador has been called on the carpet to explain, Reuters reports.

Delta is the only U.S. airline to fly its own planes (rather than code-sharing with foreign airlines) to Africa, and has been expanding its flights to the continent, AFP reports. The Nairobi flight was welcomed in Kenya, and flights had been sold out for weeks.

ABC News reports that the decision was made by Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, on the advice of the Transportation Security Administration because of increased fighting in neighboring Somalia.

Hurray For In-Flight Wi-Fi, Next Time

Last week I finally boarded a plane with on-board wi-fi but the magic moment sputtered out. I didn’t even fire up the netbook to try it out.

For one thing, I was whipped — groggy and cranky on the final leg of an 18-hour, four-airport, red-eye journey from Kauai to Hartford.  For another thing, it cost too much.

Delta charges $9.95 for a wi-fi connection on flights of less than three hours and $12.95 for longer flights. I was heading from Atlanta to Hartford, a flight that takes two and a half hours. But with the ban on using electronic devices during takeoff and landing, I’d get less than two hours of connection time. At more than $5 an hour, it just didn’t feel worth it.

I might have shelled out on the earlier flight from Honolulu to Atlanta, had wi-fi been available, but therein lies another issue. Delta’s Gogo Internet service from Aircell doesn’t work over the ocean because the signal comes from land-based towers.

So, anyway, I expected to be happier about this. Maybe next time.

Live Status Report On Delta / Northwest Merger

Northwest 747 in Delta livery at Atlanta. Weird.

I just took a Delta flight from Atlanta to Honolulu. Or was it a Northwest flight? With the airlines merging, it’s all a sort of squishy hybrid.

With help from my seatmate back in seat 63J, I was able to catalog the following distinguishing characteristics of the flight, a kind of snapshot of the progress of said merger:

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Bradley to Honolulu: $401, Round-Trip

Here’s a prediction. Someday you’re going to be shelling out $800 or $900 for a round-trip ticket to Hawaii and you’re going to remember that you once passed up a $401 round trip — with taxes and fees included — from Bradley to Honolulu.

Unless you go now.

This fare is widely available on Delta and Northwest during the month of May. Check it out on Kayak.com or the Web site of your choice.

Northwest Cancels Bradley To Amsterdam Flight

A few days ago my friend John said he was worried that Northwest would not resume its flight from Bradley to Amsterdam in June, as planned. Clearly, John should be writing this blog.

Today Northwest, which is slowly being digested by Delta, announced that, indeed, the flights will not resume. The phrase in Eric Gershon’s story in The Courant was “not financially viable at this time.” Oh, well.

It’s not a surprise but it’s a disappointment. I took that flight a year ago on my way to Istanbul and I thought it was great. Northwest did it on a 757 modified for transatlantic service, and the extra leg room made up for the inconvenience of having only a single aisle.

In any event, Bradley will remain without a transatlantic or a transcontinental flight for now. I suspect that won’t change until the economy improves substantially.

Delta, Northwest Merger Pits Coke Against Pepsi

Delta serves Coke. Northwest serves Pepsi. Something’s gotta give, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and USA Today’s Ben Mutzabaugh.

Coke and Delta are both big business in Atlanta, but Delta appears to be backing away from an earlier statement that only Coke would be served on the merged airline. In any case, nothing will change until the airlines’ respective contracts with their respective beverage suppliers expire.

I can’t claim neutrality here as French Canadians are genetically predisposed to prefer Pepsi.

Gate Confusion At Bradley

Funny coincidence. Yesterday the kid was flying out of Bradley but had trouble finding her depature gate. Today the airport released the results of a survey that concluded, among other things, that ”Bradley officials would work with airlines to make sure flight information is being displayed as clearly as possible throughout the airport,” The Courant’s Shawn R. Beals reports.

The kid was flying to the West Coast via Detroit on Northwest, and her boarding pass had a Northwest flight number. But the flight was listed only by a Delta flight number on the airport monitors. The kid asked around, and being informed enough to know that Delta and Northwest are merging, found a Delta gate with a Delta flight number and a Delta gate agent — with a Northwest jet at the gate.

There was no indication on her boarding pass of the Delta flight number and no indication on the Delta gate or the airport monitors of the Northwest flight number. For somebody who doesn’t fly often or who has language difficulties, this could be terribly confusing. And that kind of confusion could happen with any code-share flight, not just those involving the Delta-Northwest merger.

So, anyhow, nice to know Bradley intends to address that. It’s a pleasant airport, as the rest of the survey seemed to confirm.

Peanuts Served Again On Northwest Airlines

Not everyone is happy with the return of peanuts as snacks on Northwest Airlines, which is now doing business under the auspices of the Georgia-based, peanut-happy Delta Air Lines.

Nowhere is this concern expressed more forcefully, and with more insults, than on the message board attached to the Minneapolis Star Tribune story on the subject. Northwest, based in Minneapolis, had been one of many airlines that went peanut-free as concerns about allergies increased over the past 10 years.

I have preached in the past against pets in airline cabins, on the grounds that it’s unfair to people with allergies. (Which I don’t have.) And I got smacked around good for that. (No further smacking necessary, folks.)

I’m hoping that peanuts have fewer and less vigorous defenders because I’m going to suggest that if roughly one out of 100 Americans has a nut allergy (I don’t) we can probably find some other snack. I myself prefer a peanut to a pretzel, but neither is a staple of my diet.

Delta Cutting Capacity With Smaller Aircraft

I was just reading that Delta is downsizing the aircraft it flies between New York and Washington, and I’ve noticed that it’s doing something similar between Bradley and its Atlanta hub.

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