Delta Air Lines Sky Team Alliance: Do NOT fly INTERNATIONAL on Delta Air Lines. On Dec. 16, I began my international trip from Chicago to my final destination of Cairo, Egypt with 3 young kids. Delta Air Lines Alliance operates with KLM and Air France, but after this horrible trip by Delta you would never know it. It appears that while they are an alliance at every stop along the way to your final destination the Delta Alliance has no record of your name, your boarding ticket, or even the fact that you already began your trip and are en route to your final destination. Their computer system is a mess. There are no direct flights to Cairo from Chicago, so we went through Charles De Gaulle Airport, in France to then connect to Cairo, Egypt. Unfortunately for us the Air France ticket agent had no record that one of us had even left Chicago. Scary. We stood in front of her explaining that all 5 of us boarded the plane from the US to France and we are standing right in front of her. It took her over an hour while we waited with our 3 young kids for her to figure this out almost causing us to miss our flight. She did the best she could but said that the Delta computer system was not compatible with the Air France computer system so she cannot issue our tickets. She then had to make numerous calls to Delta I am assuming to get things cleared up. This took way too long and if you have traveled internationally it is not common that you would need to get reissued a new ticket when you are en route to your destination. The situation was no different on our return. After arriving two hours before our international flight from Cairo back to Chicago, the ticket agent could not issue us 2 of our tickets because Delta airlines did not have a ticket for us even though all our names were on the confirmed reservation list. They said that Delta's system was not compatible with theirs, again they have an alliance with KLM but you would never know it. It took over 2 hours for them to contact Delta and get their permission to issue the 2 tickets, meanwhile our flight had already called final boarding. We still needed to go through security and have our bags checked in. It was a miserable experience both getting there and back. I have flown internationally for over 30 years and never has my experience been so awful. A huge thank you to the KLM ticket agent in Cairo, Egypt who worked wonders to help us, no thanks to Delta. Delta's website reads: Partnering up with Air France-KLM and Alitalia allows us to offer greater service and convenience via the world's largest transatlantic network," the better word is inconvenience. The communication system you have with Air France and KLM is a complete failure. Neither airline were able to assist us do to "computer incompatibility", which required ticket agents from Air France and KLM to waste hours on the phone waiting for you to pick up and figure the problem out so you can issue a ticket. The fact that you did not know that one of your passengers left the US and boarded an international flight to France is unacceptable and scary.
This was a very difficult trip and it began poorly as well due to Delta having a mechanical problem which delayed our trip and would not allow us to make our connecting flight in France. I understand the technical problem is not their fault, when I called the Delta representative, Amy, she was the most unprofessional and uniformed person working for any airline. She told me because there was a mechanical problem that she could have us fly out 5 days later! I have never in my over 30 plus years even heard of this. Then she tried to put pressure on me saying this was the best offer she could get. I explained that the extra five days of waiting would not allow me to meet the other vacation arrangements I had made. I can understand flying the next day, but 5 days later? Then she tells me "it's a week before Christmas", as if the mechanical issue is my fault. It was in fact 9 days before Christmas and I had to plan well ahead of time with work and school to avoid the Christmas rush. To make things worse, she offered to refund my entire 5 tickets. I kindly explained, that this was not a trip to Floride, this is a 6 month in the planning trip to Cairo, Egypt. She was not helpful, dishonest and at the least needs to be retrained on mechanical delay protocol when helping passengers find solutions when traveling internationally. After ending our conversation with her we rerouted our taxi driver to head to O'Hare, originally we we suppose to leave out of Midway. The Delta representative at O'Hare, Saaida, was everything you would expect form a ticket agent. She immediately responded to our misfortune of the mechanical problem on their end and easily found us a flight to allow us to make our connecting flight. She was smart, efficient, calm, and did her job. It would be good for your company to have Amy learn from her. read more