Viaje a ningún lado

Como muchos de mis asiduos lectores saben (ja) últimamente paso más tiempo en aeropuertos que en mi dulce hogar. De hecho, desde hace nueve meses he pisado dos decenas de aeropuertos en tres continentes, entre ellos dos en Londres, JFK en NY, Houston y San Antonio en Texas, Milán, Atenas y CDG en París. Pero uno que no me propuse pisar pero que conocí hace poco fue el Logan de Boston. Aquí les comparto parte de la carta que he enviado a Delta la última semana en la que explica como un pañal me llevó a una odisea de 45 horas.

To whom it may concern:
By now, you must have heard about the nightmare that flight 58 from Atlanta to London-Gatwick on March 9 turned into for all passengers.
On Friday, March 9 I left San Antonio, Texas at 2 PM on Delta flight 647 on my way to Dubai, UAE. I arrived at my destination at 9 PM on Sunday, March 11, 45 hours after I began my trip.
As you know, the flight from Atlanta to London, the second leg of my trip, was diverted at mid flight to land on Boston Logan airport because someone clogged the toilette system with a diaper. This would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that it took your staff at Logan more than 12 hours to fix it. Even worse, the ground staff kept telling us that it would be fixed “any moment”. They did this in 30 minutes intervals until they told us, at about 4 am, that the plane wouldn’t be able to leave because the flight crew had finished its 12 hour shift. I understand the reasoning behind the 12-hour rule, but what I can’t accept is that we were notified about an hour after I saw the crew leaving the premises. Also, the ground crew was completely unprepared for the emergency. In an industry like Delta’s, the personnel should be much better prepared for this kind of situation (I couldn’t help but remember the BlueJet fiasco of some weeks ago). To give you just one example: the flight was rescheduled to leave at 11.45 am on March 10, but it left two hours late. Once we were set to depart, the pilot announced that we would have to go back to the gate because a red light was on. It seems that even after more than 12 hours working on the clogged toilette system your ground crew didn’t get it right. We had to wait, on the plane, for almost one more hour. One of the reasons we left late: there was no food for an international flights at Logan. Obviously, at that point none of us cared about the food. We wanted to leave!
During the ordeal at Logan we were offered hotel accommodations, which I refused because by the time it was my turn to receive the voucher I would have used the room for only three hours. I did receive $21 in meal vouchers, which doesn’t even come close to compensate all the hassle I went through.
Also, when I tried to reprogram my connection from London to Dubai (on Emirates), Delta’s ground crew was incredibly unhelpful, saying that this was going to be resolved in London. As I knew that the flights to Dubai are always full I needed this resolved asap. Emirates said only Delta could re-ticket. I did this over your 1-800 line, but it took three calls and over one hour to do it.
And nobody told me that my return flight from Dubai to Athens, Greece had been cancelled because of the itinerary change. So when I got to the airport in Dubai on March 18 Emirates Airlines told me my reservation had been cancelled. Fortunately there was enough room on the plane to put me on, but definitely not thanks to Delta.
I have flown with Delta thousands of miles in the past few months – at least six trips to Greece, among many more. I overheard people saying they wouldn’t fly with you again. I am seriously considering the same.
Many thanks,
Gabriel Sama