The feature works for Outlook, the Mac’s iCal and the Yahoo! and Gmail calendars.

I have to hand it to Delta, which has always been a leader in integrating its reservations system and its Web site.  A sweet little feature like that may not be enough to win my business on its own, but every little bit helps.

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.

Involuntary bumps are not terribly common. When flights are overbooked, airlines are supposed to ask for volunteers to give up their seats in return for cash or flight vouchers and a seat on a later flight. Only when airlines fail to get volunteers to accept bumps are they permitted to deny boarding  involuntarily.

I have collected compensation of $200 to $400 in vouchers many times, mostly from Delta, by accepting voluntary bumps. I used to hear offers as high as $1,000, although it’s not common these days.

I’ve never been bumped involuntarily, or even seen it happen, but it happened to a colleague. It was on Delta, but it can happen on any airline.

Each airline has its own criteria for the order in which passengers get the boot, but most deny boarding first to people who don’t have seat assignments. For that reason, you should always check in electronically as early as you can and choose a seat. If it’s a bad seat, you can try to switch it at a kiosk or ticket counter at the airport.

Other criteria that can put you at risk of an involuntary bump are not being a member of the airline’s frequent-flier program, flying in coach and flying on the lowest fares. I’m almost always guilty of the last two, so I try not to be guilty of the first one. I have more frequent-flier cards than you can shake a stick at.

Hey, they’re free. Just remember to provide the number when you book the ticket.

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.

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.

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:

• 747 registered to: Northwest
• Livery (paint scheme): Delta
• Crew uniforms: Northwest
• Safety video: Delta
• Safety instruction card: Northwest
• In-flight magazine: Delta
• Web site plugged over PA: nwa.com
• Cocktail napkins: Delta
• Plastic cutlery label: Northwest
• Cookies (embossed!): Delta
• Barf bag: unmarked

The identity crisis aside, it was a very pleasant flight with an excellent cabin crew. (Shout out to Joel: thanks for the club soda.)

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.

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.

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.

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.