What's the deal? (Delta)

alphaone

alphaone

Well-Known Member
Hi guys, as many of you know I live in Cincinnati and go to school in Cleveland. A Comair F/O buddy of mine gives me his buddy passes so I can fly up and back, it ussually works pretty good. Well this morning after Thanksgiving break I was planning on heading back up to CLE. I showed up at the airport ticket counter, after making my standby reservation 2 days before with a Delta representive AND making sure I was showing up for the flight with 40 open seats only to discover from the CSA that today is an "embargo day." Yeah, he was just like your not flying today see you later.
Now I understand the point of the embargo days; lower the number of people in the airports during heavy travel times etc. But why couldn't the person I talked to on the phone informed me of this? Since I showed up at the airport anyway and there were 40 OPEN SEATS, why couldn't the CSA let me go on anyway? And why does almost every Delta rep. I talk to get pissed for me asking them the time of day?
I have for the most part been a loyal Delta flier and want nothing more but for them to succeed but geeeeeez, they just are screwing me sometimes and apparently other passengers quite often...
 
alphaone said:
Hi guys, as many of you know I live in Cincinnati and go to school in Cleveland. A Comair F/O buddy of mine gives me his buddy passes so I can fly up and back, it ussually works pretty good. Well this morning after Thanksgiving break I was planning on heading back up to CLE. I showed up at the airport ticket counter, after making my standby reservation 2 days before with a Delta representive AND making sure I was showing up for the flight with 40 open seats only to discover from the CSA that today is an "embargo day." Yeah, he was just like your not flying today see you later.
Now I understand the point of the embargo days; lower the number of people in the airports during heavy travel times etc. But why couldn't the person I talked to on the phone informed me of this? Since I showed up at the airport anyway and there were 40 OPEN SEATS, why couldn't the CSA let me go on anyway? And why does almost every Delta rep. I talk to get pissed for me asking them the time of day?
I have for the most part been a loyal Delta flier and want nothing more but for them to succeed but geeeeeez, they just are screwing me sometimes and apparently other passengers quite often...
Click to expand...

How much did you pay for the ticket? O.K. then.....
A loyal Delta flier....? How much of your money did they get? O.K. then....
Screwing You...How...By not letting you fly on a very busy day for free? O.K. then

Dude...It is a standyby ticket. A Non-Rev ticket. Consider yourself lucky to fly for free when you do.:banghead:

I am sure there is plenty that you left out, but it seems to me that they were following the rules and you are upset becuase they screwed you by following the rules.....
 
JEP said:
How much did you pay for the ticket? O.K. then.....
A loyal Delta flier....? How much of your money did they get? O.K. then....
Screwing You...How...By not letting you fly on a very busy day for free? O.K. then
Click to expand...

JEP is oh so right.
I'll keep this in mind when I fly on Alaska and they piss me off:)
 
alphaone said:
And why does almost every Delta rep. I talk to get pissed for me asking them the time of day?
Click to expand...

Think about how many people probably ask them in a day. It would be like a controller having to repeat the next frequency to EVERY pilot...It gets old quickly.
 
FlyChicaga said:
What is this embargo day? I'm not following.
Click to expand...

I am guessing it is something like this:

trade embargo - no trade.
non-rev embargo day - no non-rev travel.
 
alphaone said:
Since I showed up at the airport anyway and there were 40 OPEN SEATS, why couldn't the CSA let me go on anyway? And why does almost every Delta rep. I talk to get pissed for me asking them the time of day?
........
Click to expand...
Just a couple of other things.......

40 open seats? and you know this how? were you on the a/c when the doors shut? Didn't think so.

And why does almost every Delta rep. I talk to get pissed for me asking them the time of day?

Lets see what we have here......
1 - an individual trying to fly on a very busy day. make that a non-rev traveler.
2 - a worker who is:
away from their family on a holiday.
working one of the busiest days of the year.
dealing with non-rev travelers who think they can fly on an embargo day
working for a company that is in financial trouble and facing a possible pilot strike.......

I think I know what side I would tend to believe.:banghead:
 
JEP said:
How much did you pay for the ticket? O.K. then.....
A loyal Delta flier....? How much of your money did they get? O.K. then....
Screwing You...How...By not letting you fly on a very busy day for free? O.K. then

Dude...It is a standyby ticket. A Non-Rev ticket. Consider yourself lucky to fly for free when you do.:banghead:

I am sure there is plenty that you left out, but it seems to me that they were following the rules and you are upset becuase they screwed you by following the rules.....
Click to expand...

I don't know Alphaone, but he said he is a loyal Delta flyer. You question this by saying this: How much of your money did they get? O.K. then. Can you tell me the travel habbits of Alphaone? I can't, so I am not going to question his loyalty to Delta because he has a non-rev ticket for this trip. Can you tell me how many tickets Alphaone has bought from Delta in the past? The airlines offer non-rev tickets which is a perk for it's employees, taking advantage of the perk does not mean that he can't voice his opinion of the service he gets. Each passenger on a flight is a customer, regardless if the ticket is non-rev or not. By your tone, it sounds like Alphaone should do a Lav Service on the plane because he has a non-rev ticket...:banghead:
 
I think he's more pissed about not being told about the embargo day before he showed up at the airport.......just my opinion though
 
slowandlow said:
Think about how many people probably ask them in a day. It would be like a controller having to repeat the next frequency to EVERY pilot...It gets old quickly.
Click to expand...
small problem

IT'S HIS EFFING JOB. Don't like it? Maybe ATC isn't the job for him.
 
True it is his/her job. On the other hand would you like it if you got an amended clearance and rerouted from every sector you flew into. I wouldn't but after about 3,4 or 10 of them I would get a little irritated. Thats my point.
 
Philip said:
small problem

IT'S HIS EFFING JOB. Don't like it? Maybe ATC isn't the job for him.
Click to expand...

Well, how would you like it if every time you called approach, tower, center, they responded with, "Calling approach say again?" Controllers and pilots are both professionals...we (controllers and pilots) expect to be treated in a professional manor and in turn we should act like professionals. Bottom line...pay attention...you're not the only one in the sky.

Sorry this has nothing to do with the original post...just my opinion on this matter!
 
Well the way I see it is that the FO buddy should have warned you but at the same time I didnt know about the embargo until I came across it by chance on a page at work. Yes you got hosed by an agent but you arent the first. Your buddy failed to let you know and he was probably made aware of it 2 or 3 weeks ago. The DL agent that let you go in the first place should have looked at intinerary but probably didnt. Did you learn a lesson? I think so. And just to let you know the same embargo is coming up for
Christmas time travel also....beware..
 
rickyrhodesii said:
Well, how would you like it if every time you called approach, tower, center, they responded with, "Calling approach say again?" Controllers and pilots are both professionals...we (controllers and pilots) expect to be treated in a professional manor and in turn we should act like professionals. Bottom line...pay attention...you're not the only one in the sky.

Sorry this has nothing to do with the original post...just my opinion on this matter!
Click to expand...
still not caring.
 
Alphaone:
If it makes you feel any better I've never heard of an embargo day either, and it's name isn't very self-explaining either. Embargo? Huh?

I agree though, your friend left you high and dry that day....Whoever took the phone reservation dropped the ball as well.

Being a gate agent at a financially strapped airline on a busy travel day does not give them carte blanche to treat you poorly. Even as a non-rever if you act appropriately you should expect nothing less than the same from them. If you get lippy, all bets are off.
 
Honestly, your beef is with your friend who gave you the buddy passes. If he purchased a buddy pass, mailed them to you and didn't adamantly follow-up with you up to the day of the flight with updates, he did you a grand disservice.

Hence, when asked, I don't have buddy passes. Unless of course, I'm able to commit myself to watching loads, weather and watching out for alternative methods of travel if it fills up. The loads may have said 40 open seats last week, but I betchya it probably didn't leave with 40 open seats after it pushed.

Some cities have travel embargo days on buddy passes. Sometimes Hawaii has a rolling list of literally hundreds of non-rev standbys. So when you look at the loads, and notice that there are 10 open seats on a HNL-LAX flight and head on down to the airport only to realize that the flights have been oversold for days, there's a rolling standby list of 115 people and the gate agents are dealing with 115 + X amount of people screaming "How do I get home? I've got to go to work tomorrow! AAAAAAAAAH! I paid $100 for a ticket! AAAAAAAH!" :)

Thus, the travel embargo hits. Generally travel embargos are publicized months in advance. If they didn't, that 100 NRSA list can (and has) grown to 150 to 200 to whatever in some popular cities on popular travel weekends.

They don't happen often, but it's your friends responsibility to take care of that stuff.

If you want to non rev ABC to XYZ on monday, make sure he checks the loads and weather on sunday. If sunday's full and there aren't any NRSA's getting on, chances are they'll be back at the airport on monday in front of you.

Trust me, commuting I've seen flights with 20 open seats in coach and 5 seats in first with no standbys on the list to speak of end up in an oversold situation at the snap of a finger.
 
JEP said:
I am guessing it is something like this:

trade embargo - no trade.
non-rev embargo day - no non-rev travel.
Click to expand...
however, normally, it is annouced "inside delta" if there's an embargo going on and I haven't heard of one going on.. so this is news to me too since my dad is flying non-rev tomorrow to get back to virginia...

Hopefully whatever embargo is going on, they'll let people fly tomorrow cuz otherwise I'll be calling pass bureau and asking them why they haven't notified anyone of an embargo going on! normally, they're very good about that.

ok, somebody update me on when the embargo ends because I haven't seen a darn thing about it inside tnet....not to mention that everytime i try to go look at the embargo page or any non-rev information - it points to the wrong website address... i sure wish they'd get their "inside" site fixed!! it's been like that for eons!
 
Ok.. I found it but you definately can't find the data via tnet, so that kinda sucks... gotta put vpn back on i guess or something in order to find that information...

as it is, tomorrow, everyone and their mother is going to be trying to travel standby - all those who couldn't yesterday and sunday will be....so i'd suggest getting to the airport bright and early!

yea.. whoever got you that pass should have told you.. because technically, you can't even BUY a pass if your traveling on an embargo date - so you must've gotten the pass well before they announced the embargo dates.
 
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