Get Your Act Together

Last night I was blissfully sleeping when I was awakened by my phone ringing at 5am on the dot. I looked over at it and saw that it was from a 1-800 number and my immediate reaction was to get pissed for some telemarketer calling me at an insanely early hour. Then I thought I guess I should answer since you never know.

I answer it to hear a recording from Delta Airlines telling me my flight has changed for my trip today from BWI to Detroit, but that my trip details from Detroit to Fort Wayne, Indiana "has been preserved". I was utterly confused considering that I did not book a flight for that day and certainly had no plans to be visiting Fort Wayne.

I start running through possibilities in my head about what this could possible be about. I logged into American Express to make sure no one was using my card fraudulently, but there was none. Then I remembered my sister telling me she was going to that area this weekend, but I was totally confused as to why Delta would be calling ME about it. I didn't want to call her and wake her since it was 5am so I sent her a text saying that if she was flying to Fort Wayne today she should call Delta since her flight changed. She texted me back an hour later saying "thanks" so I'm still not sure if that call was actually about her flight or what.

As a side note, Delta really needs to get their act together. What's this business about changing the flight plans for a flight 4 hours before the flight? Since I am not the one who actually booked the trip I have no idea what the original itinerary was (I only know what the new itinerary is) I can't tell what exactly changed - the airport, the flight time, the connecting city - but I do know that they should have this figured out 4 hours before the flight took off. Also, how is calling the person with an automated recording the best way to inform someone of their flight changes. If I needed to write that information down, being awoken in the middle of the night is not when I would have been able to write down the important details the recording was telling me (the recording just told me my new flight details and then hung up) - I think speaking to an actual human being, or at least having the option to, would have been most efficient.

Lastly, I don't have the best opinion of these "automatic re-bookings" that take place. Although it wasn't a Delta flight, when my friend Jenna and I were flying to London together, we booked a flight that went from Columbus (where Jenna lives) to DC (where I live) to London. After we made the reservations, Jenna got a similar automated call (although this call came months before our flight) that Columbus to DC portion of the flight had been cancelled so they re-booked her on another flight from Columbus to DC. Only problem was the new flight arrived in DC after our flight from DC to London took off. Don't you think that's something they should be looking for when changing your flight. There ended up being no other flights from Columbus to DC that morning, so she came in the night before and then we went to the airport together so it ended up all working out but it was still quite annoying.