Giving Credit Where Credit is Due -- Delta Airlines
I've been a frequent critic of most of the airlines for seemingly training their staff to be difficult at best and downright confrontational at worst. The customer service people for many of the airlines are completely unlike the friendly, cheerful, eager-to-help customer service people that you find at most rental car and hotel counters. I've never accepted the excuse that the job is somehow more difficult or the pay somehow worse than what is earned similarly qualified people in the same hospitality industry or even at other airlines like Southwest. It's just the culture.
Thankfully, I had a wonderful experience this weekend courtesy of Delta Airlines. A relative on my wife's side of the family is ill enough that my physician brother-in-law decided at the last moment to fly from the U.K. to be with him and to try to get some straight answers from his healthcare providers. My brother-in-law flew from Heathrow to Minneapolis then to Salt Lake City and then transferred again to his ultimate destination. He had only one hour and 20 minutes in Minneapolis so didn't have time to leave the secured area to say hello to us but we knew that it would mean a lot to him if we could see him face-to-face.
I called Delta to ask if we could meet him in one of their SkyClub lounges in the airport. I knew that people used them for job interviews and business meetings so suspected that there was some rule that would allow a non-flier to go through security for that purpose. The guy I spoke with at reservations couldn't be nicer. He didn't know but rather than just saying no so he could hang up and move onto the next call, he instead did the right thing by saying he'd find out. He came back a minute or two later with almost all of the information, put me on hold, got the rest, and came back. He transferred me to the SkyClub people, who were even nicer. They reserved a conference room for us for the reasonable fee of $45 and arranged for gate passes.
Three of us went through security with little difficulty. The TSA security people had a close look at our gate passes and photo ID's but let us go through without any hassles. We then met my brother-in-law, put a big smile on his face, and all left feeling much better about Delta.
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