Could you imagine being forced to spend a night onboard an aircraft while it’s simply parked at an airport? That’s exactly what happened to passengers on two Delta flights on Thursday night, into Friday morning. This sounds decidedly un-premium!
Continue reading: Ouch: Passengers Spend Night On Delta 737 After Diversion
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
This case is a great argument in favor of open borders. Silly laws around artificially demarcated borders to keep out members of our own species meant that hundreds of people spent a night sitting upright in a metal tube.
Ouch! Well, this just must be false, because Delta is obviously the worlds most-premium-best airline and this never would have happened
Setting aside my advocacy of open borders, an airport doesn't need to have a full fledged CBP facility to process international arrivals.
My hometown (population <100k) in middle America has a locally residing CBP Officer on call to handle the occasional internationally arriving private plane.
Somebody in the government should have been alerted to this Delta situation and decreed the equivalent of an executive order to get CBP Officers to the airport and process anyone who wished to get off the plane.
Let's not be silly now. The people of Mexico are friendly, the food is fantastic, and there are many great deals. I have an AMEX offer for $200 off $1,000 Hilton in Mexico.
Planes that have arriving passengers that need cleared should be required to divert to an airport that has border and customs facilities unless other circumstances such as medical, plane malfunction, or lack of fuel dictate. Of course they didn’t and predictably the crew timed out.
Lot of factors above DL's control. The plane may have been low on fuel and could not divert anywhere else. It's a small airport with limited resources. And since it's International it's not like DL could simply charter a bus to finish the trip. Weather conditions probably prevented a crew and a/c being dispatched from ATL.
The orange banana republic couldn't sell a fee of it's thousands and thousands of border people to Montgomery to check passports?
What a third world country.
Agree with this. And non-CBP airports, however minor, should have a holding pen area with bathrooms and water for this very reason. It's not like passengers are gonna jump a security fence to get into the country (right?).
Seriously now, one could not make this scenario up.
Is there anyone at Delta who can be trusted to run a bath?
I don't see how this isn't totally on Delta. Yes, weather is beyond their control. But surely Delta had some say as to where to land the two planes. For international flights why choose to land at an airport without the necessary arrival facilities. Even if Delta thought (hoped?) that it would be a quick diversion, why take that risk? The planes circled for a while - they could have easily landed at Charleston, Charlotte, or Jacksonville, all of which have international arrivals capability.
Since “we are rethinking the role of the govt” why not outsource some immigration functions to airlines? If Delta had its own CBP officers, it would have flown them to process the flights and avoided most of this mess!
If you've banned Tim Dunn, you should probably stop doing the "premium" jabs in the posts. At this point it feels like punching down.
Even if the plan is to refuel and depart again, there’s always a chance the flight won’t make it out again right away. Maintenance issues, weather that won’t clear at the destination, crew timeouts, and other reasons could all come up unexpectedly to drive a need to deplane everyone.
Any flight arriving from another country should plan a CBP-capable station as their diversion point.
Birmingham or Huntsville should have CBP facilities. Just maybe no agents at that time.
What Delta could also do is ferry in new pilots. To relief 2 jets at a same airport isn't that bad.
Regardless DL seems to get worse at handling situations like this. And Tim has to wait till at least May to fluff us DL still has best on time ratings.
But it’s Delta themselves who use the term “premium” over and over in press releases, earnings call, etc.
17 hours in a 737?!
I am surprised no one had a medical emergency.
But to be honest, this is the only way out in such a situation.
When I read of situs like this, I am reminded of ed bastian lauding the incoming administration because of his belief that no one will hold them accountable for crap like this. Absolutely ridiculous that this nonsense is still going on.
Delta cracks as soon as the should-be-expected happens…
Hell my first thought half way through this article was I’m sure they did this to avoid “canceling” a flight… and that probably was their mentality all the way up to forced disembarkation.
Amusingly, I sorta feel bad for those first class passengers who paid $3,000 for this Uber premium Delta experience from hell but will only receive skypesos as compensation.
Why on earth would you stop calling a lie a lie. the parallels today….
Delta is not premium period. But they certainly act and sell themselves as if they are. That deserves recurring attention to help ensure the flying public aren’t fooled.
Keep repeating something and eventually they believe you…. Unless someone else keeps reminding them of the facts.
Open borders aye? You must want an illegal or a terrorist to nuke a city, rape your granny, paralyze your brother in a hit and run, or prostitute your kid. You are a real Georgia peach to have in our presence today. Well back to logistics of this Delta diversion, customs closure times are a well known fact at airports. Seems the company really tried to err on the side of hope rather than err on the side of likely outcomes by not diverting sooner to an airport with open customs and immigration. Guess overnighting the passengers on a plane is far cheaper. You get what your pay for i guess so think of this the next time you choose a carrier which doesn’t act proactively and makes questionable decisions.
Why didn’t they just divert the flights to another airport that has customs and immigration?
The US has really become a true banana republic. It is unbelievable that they can’t even get a secure room to hold the prisoners, I mean passengers, in a semi decent condition. It is an airport, it must have a TSA secure area after all. There is nothing lately we can do right… what a joke
“My advocacy of open borders”———-are you the one who will pay $$$$$$$$$
to feed, clothe, shelter in five star hotels, etc. etc., all the people who want to come?
Fine, GREAT…if you have the big bucks??
People who think they are generous and elite because of spending other people’s money are neither.
When you feed pigeons, you get more pigeons. Duh!
It’s on the shoulders of DL Ops.
Admittedly if the weather was that bad many flights were disrupted, and their hands were full, but they have enough experience to know how to handle SE weather and diversions.
Why is it impossible for US DHS to allow flexibility in a case like this. Let the passengers off the plane, put them up in a hotel, and process them in the morning on arrival in ATL? That's the humane solution. It's not like any terrorist knew about this diversion. So what if someone who didn't know manages to escape. DHS already has the passenger list with documents.
It's cruel to force the passengers to spend the night on the aircraft in this situation, and it doesn't serve an adequate purpose to force this.
Where is common sense and consideration for the comfort of the human beings on this aircraft?
I was there that morning to fly AA to DFW at 0645. I was wondering why there were so many people in line at the Delta counter. After clearing security, clutching my PreCheck card, airport police told everyone that due to diverting flights, ALL flights were leaving from the lower gates 1,2, and 3. We were supposed to leave out of 5. I saw the police had folks corralled in one area. We had no idea they were international flights that needed Customs and Immigration services. Someone had brought in dozens of boxes of Krispy Cream donuts, Coke and other snacks. I felt bad for them-I can't imagine sitting in 33 A all night!
Fail to see how it’s not DL fault here they could’ve diverted to JAX or SAV with CBP facilities and Delta frequencies to bring new crew quickly. Hope they refund the passengers
This is on DL OPS. The flight could have diverted to BNA/CHS/CLT/SAV/JAX even MSY if weather was hammering all of the SouthEast.
Piss poor planning.
Coming to America is always a primitive experience compared to international arrivals in the first world, but this downright miserable.
That is so incredibly inept. Delta could have DRIVEN a replacement crew there before everyone debarked at 5:30AM. Every one of those passengers should get the entire cost of the flight reimbursed for having to spend 16-17 hours on a sardine can 737.
I am curious to know if the listed alternate in the flight plan was MGM for both flights and how much holding/contingency fuel they were carrying. A Golden rule of International Dispatch is your alternates must have CBP or it forces situations like this or forces CBP to drive to that location to process passengers. But, if MGM was actually their listed alternate I would have a slew of questions for the Dispatcher and the Captain, and demand re-training or a sacking!
Does Elon Musk know about the waste of a CBP Officer in your tiny town?
Fire this wasteful government employee
Don't planes always have a planned diversion airport in their flight plan? Surely, there had to have been another airport within range with CBP facilities. I know my little regional airport has a diversion plan and even includes the phone numbers for the lead TSA agent and the lead CDP agent from the closest CDP office so arrangements can be made in a situation like this.
I checked, the nearest airport with a CBP facility would have been Birmingham, 96 miles away. Idk why they wouldn't just land there.
You've never flown Ryanair I take it. US isn't the only place where stuff will go south due to a small glitch in the system.
I do believe that it is clear for all to see that Delta, failed to effectively plan for this type of aviation occurrence.
Come back Tim Dunn …. all is forgiven:-)
Who would choose to fly Ryanair when there is a viable alternative?
Walking, cycling, driving by car or bus and not forgetting the train of course.
With Delta pretending to be a world class airline, this scenario should prove them to be over optimistic. One is very pleased that they are ‘over there’ and not over here 🙂
Poor planning on DL operations staff. During poor WX, SOP is to divert intl flights to airports with customs & Immigrations. Domestic go to smaller airports. Been there, done that!
Coke is disgusting, and I say that as an Atlanta native, but I'll fight you over Krispy Kreme
Especially considering they were all flying to the US anyway so they probably all had required documents. Truly sad
He is now happy spewing his verbal diarrhea over at LALF without any controls…good riddance
Apparently, BHM was ground stop for continous lightning per a passenger I talked with at MGM.
A passenger told me that morning that they almost ran out fuel after trying to approach Birmingham.
I felt like they could've dropped them off at the airport hotel, man i feel them bro.
Agreed, but people in government don't want to take responsibility for doing sensible things that breach some rule. And given the actions of their top bosses it's hard to criticise them.
From the several circular flight paths shown before they decided to land at Montgomery, why did they just not go to CLT which could have handled the situation? Seems like DL could have predicted the weather and the pilots' out-of-hours and made a better decision!
Forward-thinking airport managers would have a plan for this. Several Delta flights were also diverted to Charleston, SC (CHS) on Saturday night. While they were given gates and passengers were allowed to deplane, later inbound flights that were SCHEDULED to arrive in CHS, were forced to remain idling on the ramp as their gates were now occupied. In at least one case, a Southwest (WN) flight waited over two hours. What about an air-stairs truck? Nope. Apparently CHS has a policy that any flights deplaning on the ramp must be physically guarded by airline staff until they are moved to gate. This late at night WN only had a skeleton-crew with enough people to deal with their normal duties. While this isn't a common situation a policy should be put in place for dealing with anomalies. Ultimately the passengers are the airport's customers too.