We’ll, Delta continues to underwhelm. We were 2 hr late getting off from Athens and of course late getting into JFK. We waited about 30+ min for our bags to show up at the carousel and most likely would have missed our connecting flight, but, wouldn’t ya know, it was delayed 3 hrs with a 1027 pm departure. Ooops, strike that, I spoke too soon we just got an alert, our connecting flight is now delayed again- to 1210 am, oops make that 1230 am. Anyone want to take odds we aren’t getting out of here tonight?
Oh, and earlier we had to stand in line for about 20 min just to get into the Sky Club!
I guess because it is a holiday weekend plus staffing issues, none of that is helping. Enjoy a good lie in when you get home or better still, tell is your beginning trip story! I do hope your wife isn’t saying ‘ no more Tauck tours!’
We’ll, Unfortunately, I was right. Flight now delayed until 09300955 tomorrow morning. Delta not issuing hotel vouchers. Memorial Day weekend- no hotel rooms. Not sure where we will spend the night. Getting too old for an all-nighter
Alan...a good travel tale quickly becomes a nightmare. I say sell this story & reap some profit & definitely contact Delta when you get home. Good luck with tomorrow's flight. And thanks so much for your tour notes, much appreciated. Hoping you are taking a bit of a break. p.s. Tours too often start/end on weekends, not sure why.
I hope you are in a hotel. We’ve been in that boat. Tauck/insurance paid for a limo to a pretty expensive suite in London for three days … no questions asked.
So sorry for your ordeal Alan! I do hope you get a generous insurance pay out that softens the inconveniences. This gets so tough as we get older, not an adventure. The news was reporting scenes of chaotic airports last night, not that weather related, but lack of foresight in staffing and underestimated travel demands. Us,we stay as close to home as we can on most public holidays.
Marketart. We used to like it when tours started over the weekend when my husband was still working as it meant he didn’t need to take so many work vacation days and with careful planning we could squeeze in the usual longer tour and one of the shorter week long tours that Tauck started offering like Puglia at a difference time of year. Now we try to avoid anything at the weekends and find our entertainment during the week. The pleasures of retirement.
Oh Alan, I am so sorry for all of your travel issues. I read yesterday that Delta had the most cancellations this weekend. According to CNBC there were 1200 flights canceled as of 2 pm Saturday and more than 2300 cancellations on Friday. Delta had 240 flight canceled on Saturday alone. Some cancellations due to weather, however, the majority had to do with staffing issues, so sad. I agree, it is harder to deal with all of these delays as we age. Hope you get home today.
Alan, we are leaving this morning for Northern Spain and the Rioja valley and have encountered numerous problems yesterday with our itinerary. We were on the phone with American Airlines for over three hours. It was a nightmare. Finally, Tauck came through for us but now one of us will have to sit in economy from Tucson to Chicago. However, this is nothing compared to what you and your wife have endured. Sending good thoughts your way!
AlanS - If you weren't able to locate a hotel, I hope Delta at least kept the lounge open for you all night. Based on their recent press release it might be wise to avoid Delta for the next few months. On the other hand perhaps all airlines are in the same boat and Delta was the only one to be up front about it.
Yes, British, we are lucky when we can choose when to travel, off-season, mid-week, etc. Tuesday's always been my favorite day to travel. Avoiding weekends and holidays can even make getting to the airport easier. I don't want to relive my nightmare hotel experience in Avignon during Spring Break!
We’ll, Unfortunately, I was right. Flight now delayed until 09300955 tomorrow morning. Delta not issuing hotel vouchers. Memorial Day weekend- no hotel rooms. Not sure where we will spend the night. Getting too old for an all-nighter
AlanS What a crappy way to end an enjoyable trip. Breath, Relax, and Focus on your wonderful trip memories. There's nothing you can do about the airline situation so do not spend an energy thinking about it. I hope you were able to secure a decent hotel room or rather a FABULOUS hotel room - the benefits of Insurance.
I got the impression there were no hotel rooms, that was the trouble.
When we moved to the US, we had never heard of Spring break and made the fatal mistake of visiting San Diego in a budget hotel with our kids. I can’t recount everything we encountered here on the forum because it would be classed as X rated. Needless to say, we learned our lesson and so apparently did our children, one of whom spent her Spring breaks volunteering for Habitat for Humanity.
Alan my friend, hope you are on your way home by now.... what a nightmare!
That's why I try to book all straight flights (when possible) but being a long weekend and having travels back, Delta should have planned better.
Hope you get home soon and safe.
We ended up spending last night in JFK- that place does not have any lounge chairs or anything approaching a sleep-able surface other than carpeted floor at the gates. Many resorted to that option. The Delta help desk line was still very long, even at 2-3:00 am!!! Forget about getting through on the phone, even using the medallion number. I did connect via chat, but they were of no help. Delta kept changing our flight to later and later, I think the last one was to 2:30 am or so, but I knew that one wouldn't go and I was right. It just didn't make sense to head into the city and sleep for a few hours and head right back. Since they were calling it a weather delay they were not issuing hotel vouchers and their contract hotels, like every other hotel w/in reasonable distance, were sold out. Those following the news know weather supposedly started the cascade, but it was poor operations and management decisions that got them in this situation.
Update- forgot to mention, we also had to wait in line for 15+ min just to get into the Delta Sky lounge!!!
Our initial resting location was on a main concourse, where at 2:00am + it was still too noisy, so we went searching for a better spot- did you know that "JFK is a non-smoking airport?" After a loud "bing, bong" we were reminded of that fact about every 15 or 20 min. all night long! We finally found a quiet spot at the bitter end of the lengthy Teminal 4 pier. With proper positioning of body/knees around the arm, we (I) could assume a horizontal position. The AC wasn't too cold like some spots. Before retiring for the rest of the night (2+ hours or so before the Delta Sky lounge re-opened), I noticed a gate agent and one of the rare "Red Jacket" people wrapping up at a nearby gate. I went over there and the agent helped me get a slightly earlier flight with an 8:10am departure (only 5 hours from that moment). We supposedly had two seats, not yet assigned. The Delta website looked like there were possibly two, but separated, 1st class seats, though they could not be selected on Delta dot com or the Delta app. She also made entries about our bags, which were still somewhere in the system, but nobody knew where!!! We tried to sleep a bit more, went to the Sky lounge a little after 5:00 when it opened, then to the gate to plead our case for seats which was successful. After all that, the flight was 25 min late getting off. The pilot kept the pedal to the metal, and taxied faster that any flight in recent memory so we arrived at our home airport on time- and wonder among wonders, our bags showed up at the carousel!! We got home and just dumped everything right inside the door. I took a quick shower, said hello to our cat and went to bed for about 5 hours. I think I'll head that way again- heck with getting our body clocks adjusted.
I've already posted much of what we saw and experienced but after some more reflection, I'll try to add some more comments about our overall Treasures of the Aegean experience. I'll try, but it was and will be hard to prevent the events getting there and home from affecting our feelings about this trip. Was it good?, Yes. Could it have been better? Definitely. Could Tauck/Windstar have done better in the current environment? TBD. One more comment before I go back to bed- at least we are not like our two very good friends and fellow travelers who are stuck cooling their heals for 10 days in an Athens hotel (not the Grande Bretagne). It took 2.5 hours yesterday for them to get breakfast which was mostly unidentifiable and inedible.
I suppose when making air arrangements so far in advance before a trip, we hope for the best and expect the worst. It’s hard to be prepared for anything like what you experienced. I don’t know how I would have endured all those hours of lack of sleep. In hindsight Alan, if your air was organized by the Tauck air department, do you think these type of issues would have been resolved in a timely manner while you were traveling if you would have contacted them and whether or not ? Of course, hindsight is 50/50 but good questions.
Very glad you are home Alan and with your bags, which could have been another headache.
I know you don’t usually book flights through Tauck, but I’m thinking they might not have been of help if many customers were in the same situation as you, their air dept.would have been overwhelmed like the regular agents are at the moment.
The one thing we always do now is get a car service to and from the airport, to heck with how much it costs. Whenever our flights have been delayed, they keep track and are there waiting. It would not be safe to drive with lack of sleep, I’ve worked too many night shifts to understand how dangerous it is to drive feeling very tired. Shoveling snow from around your car just once on return from vacation was enough way back when.
I don't think Tauck could have done much. It was a bad weekend to be flying. Per Usatoday, more than 1600 flights canceled Sunday, 1500 Saturday and 2300 Friday. Delta was the worst hit with 250 Saturday and 160 Sunday. Just glad you got home safe Alan.
So glad you got home and with the luggage !!!! I was very lucky going to London and coming back from France, the later was delayed for about 45 mts but we had already boarded, that made my connection in Atlanta a bit hairy mostly because it takes so long to get the luggage and they used 2 carousels which made it difficult and what's the use of having Sky Priority tags when you end up being one of the last bags.
OurTravels34
2:33AM
I suppose when making air arrangements so far in advance before a trip, we hope for the best and expect the worst. It’s hard to be prepared for anything like what you experienced. I don’t know how I would have endured all those hours of lack of sleep. In hindsight Alan, if your air was organized by the Tauck air department, do you think these type of issues would have been resolved in a timely manner while you were traveling if you would have contacted them and whether or not ? Of course, hindsight is 50/50 but good questions.
This was not a early booking issue, but a last minute interruption. Based on what I read and heard on the news- Memorial Day weekend was a disaster for all the airlines, but especially for Delta. I haven't seen the details, but from Claudia's post and what little I did see, it seems like Delta ultimately cancelled well over 1000 flights. We were just a small statistic in what was evidently a major issue.
Again, I blame it on Delta and other airlines senior management and operations. When there are pilots, crew, and airplanes they do well. But, now they are trying to fly schedules that manning and aircraft availability can barely support. There is no slack in the system, no spare crews, no spare aircraft, or empty seats- in fact, they are attempting to fly full aircraft and even over-selling seats. The slightest hiccup rapidly snowballs with no remedy. Had JFK been a few hours closer, I would have driven there. As it is, we have a 2 hr drive to RDU.
Two weeks ago when our first outbound feeder flight was cancelled and the follow-on flight was international with limited flights per day/week, I asked if Delta could book us to JFK on another carrier . I was told none of them were accepting Delta bookings as they were having problems themselves. We physically went to each carrier at RDU and were told all their flights to JFK were booked solid.
Delta's second attempt to get us on a flight, was in standby- for an oversold flight!! We watched as the gate agent tried to find four people to voluntarily give up their seats to 4 ticketed passengers who didn't have seats and were trying to make international flights. No volunteers. How about money or an unrestricted gift card in the amount of $800 (four times what a main cabin ticket cost!!)- one taker. How about $1200!- one taker. Boarding was almost complete. Two others who had seats were holding back and hadn't boarded. They indicated they might be interested so the gate agent asked what it would take. One guy said $2000! The gate agent made a quick phone call - Bingo!! Not only did the last two holdouts get $2000 each, all four of those who gave up their seats got $2000 each!! Of course it didn't help us, we were the next two in line at the top of the stand-by list. We should have asked the agent to go on the plane and make the same offer, since most passengers had boarded and didn't hear what was transpiring or the final amount.
So, getting back to the question whether booking through Tauck would have made a difference, I doubt it. If planes are not flying or if they are, but are fully booked, it doesn't matter who is doing the booking, you ain't gonna get there.
I'm just glad none of the pre-tour excursions I arranged required a deposit or pre-payment. Missing the Segway at Sunset tour of Athens, the full day trip to Delphi, and the walking tour of Athens didn't cost me a thing.
Comments
I for sure appreciate them. I'm reading an old murder mystery where someone dies at Mycenae while on a tour of Greece. Very timely.
Flight home delayed 2 hrs. It just arrived so hopefully will depart as forecast. We should have enough time at JFK to make our connection.
Fantastic photos Alan and thank you for the wine cases you're bringing me as souvenirs.
Keep having fun!
We’ll, Delta continues to underwhelm. We were 2 hr late getting off from Athens and of course late getting into JFK. We waited about 30+ min for our bags to show up at the carousel and most likely would have missed our connecting flight, but, wouldn’t ya know, it was delayed 3 hrs with a 1027 pm departure. Ooops, strike that, I spoke too soon we just got an alert, our connecting flight is now delayed again- to 1210 am, oops make that 1230 am. Anyone want to take odds we aren’t getting out of here tonight?
Oh, and earlier we had to stand in line for about 20 min just to get into the Sky Club!
That gives you some time to tell us the story of your three day trip to Athens. (;-)
I guess because it is a holiday weekend plus staffing issues, none of that is helping. Enjoy a good lie in when you get home or better still, tell is your beginning trip story! I do hope your wife isn’t saying ‘ no more Tauck tours!’
We’ll, Unfortunately, I was right. Flight now delayed until 09300955 tomorrow morning. Delta not issuing hotel vouchers. Memorial Day weekend- no hotel rooms. Not sure where we will spend the night. Getting too old for an all-nighter
Alan...a good travel tale quickly becomes a nightmare. I say sell this story & reap some profit & definitely contact Delta when you get home. Good luck with tomorrow's flight. And thanks so much for your tour notes, much appreciated. Hoping you are taking a bit of a break. p.s. Tours too often start/end on weekends, not sure why.
So sorry for you. 😢
I hope you are in a hotel. We’ve been in that boat. Tauck/insurance paid for a limo to a pretty expensive suite in London for three days … no questions asked.
So sorry for your ordeal Alan! I do hope you get a generous insurance pay out that softens the inconveniences. This gets so tough as we get older, not an adventure. The news was reporting scenes of chaotic airports last night, not that weather related, but lack of foresight in staffing and underestimated travel demands. Us,we stay as close to home as we can on most public holidays.
Marketart. We used to like it when tours started over the weekend when my husband was still working as it meant he didn’t need to take so many work vacation days and with careful planning we could squeeze in the usual longer tour and one of the shorter week long tours that Tauck started offering like Puglia at a difference time of year. Now we try to avoid anything at the weekends and find our entertainment during the week. The pleasures of retirement.
Oh Alan, I am so sorry for all of your travel issues. I read yesterday that Delta had the most cancellations this weekend. According to CNBC there were 1200 flights canceled as of 2 pm Saturday and more than 2300 cancellations on Friday. Delta had 240 flight canceled on Saturday alone. Some cancellations due to weather, however, the majority had to do with staffing issues, so sad. I agree, it is harder to deal with all of these delays as we age. Hope you get home today.
Alan, we are leaving this morning for Northern Spain and the Rioja valley and have encountered numerous problems yesterday with our itinerary. We were on the phone with American Airlines for over three hours. It was a nightmare. Finally, Tauck came through for us but now one of us will have to sit in economy from Tucson to Chicago. However, this is nothing compared to what you and your wife have endured. Sending good thoughts your way!
AlanS - If you weren't able to locate a hotel, I hope Delta at least kept the lounge open for you all night. Based on their recent press release it might be wise to avoid Delta for the next few months. On the other hand perhaps all airlines are in the same boat and Delta was the only one to be up front about it.
Yes, British, we are lucky when we can choose when to travel, off-season, mid-week, etc. Tuesday's always been my favorite day to travel. Avoiding weekends and holidays can even make getting to the airport easier. I don't want to relive my nightmare hotel experience in Avignon during Spring Break!
AlanS What a crappy way to end an enjoyable trip. Breath, Relax, and Focus on your wonderful trip memories. There's nothing you can do about the airline situation so do not spend an energy thinking about it. I hope you were able to secure a decent hotel room or rather a FABULOUS hotel room - the benefits of Insurance.
I got the impression there were no hotel rooms, that was the trouble.
When we moved to the US, we had never heard of Spring break and made the fatal mistake of visiting San Diego in a budget hotel with our kids. I can’t recount everything we encountered here on the forum because it would be classed as X rated. Needless to say, we learned our lesson and so apparently did our children, one of whom spent her Spring breaks volunteering for Habitat for Humanity.
Alan my friend, hope you are on your way home by now.... what a nightmare!
That's why I try to book all straight flights (when possible) but being a long weekend and having travels back, Delta should have planned better.
Hope you get home soon and safe.
It’s hard for Alan to do straight flights from where he lives
So sorry for the ending to what was a wonderfule trip, thank you for the pictures it brought back a lot of memories.
We ended up spending last night in JFK- that place does not have any lounge chairs or anything approaching a sleep-able surface other than carpeted floor at the gates. Many resorted to that option. The Delta help desk line was still very long, even at 2-3:00 am!!! Forget about getting through on the phone, even using the medallion number. I did connect via chat, but they were of no help. Delta kept changing our flight to later and later, I think the last one was to 2:30 am or so, but I knew that one wouldn't go and I was right. It just didn't make sense to head into the city and sleep for a few hours and head right back. Since they were calling it a weather delay they were not issuing hotel vouchers and their contract hotels, like every other hotel w/in reasonable distance, were sold out. Those following the news know weather supposedly started the cascade, but it was poor operations and management decisions that got them in this situation.
Update- forgot to mention, we also had to wait in line for 15+ min just to get into the Delta Sky lounge!!!
Our initial resting location was on a main concourse, where at 2:00am + it was still too noisy, so we went searching for a better spot- did you know that "JFK is a non-smoking airport?" After a loud "bing, bong" we were reminded of that fact about every 15 or 20 min. all night long! We finally found a quiet spot at the bitter end of the lengthy Teminal 4 pier. With proper positioning of body/knees around the arm, we (I) could assume a horizontal position. The AC wasn't too cold like some spots. Before retiring for the rest of the night (2+ hours or so before the Delta Sky lounge re-opened), I noticed a gate agent and one of the rare "Red Jacket" people wrapping up at a nearby gate. I went over there and the agent helped me get a slightly earlier flight with an 8:10am departure (only 5 hours from that moment). We supposedly had two seats, not yet assigned. The Delta website looked like there were possibly two, but separated, 1st class seats, though they could not be selected on Delta dot com or the Delta app. She also made entries about our bags, which were still somewhere in the system, but nobody knew where!!! We tried to sleep a bit more, went to the Sky lounge a little after 5:00 when it opened, then to the gate to plead our case for seats which was successful. After all that, the flight was 25 min late getting off. The pilot kept the pedal to the metal, and taxied faster that any flight in recent memory so we arrived at our home airport on time- and wonder among wonders, our bags showed up at the carousel!!
We got home and just dumped everything right inside the door. I took a quick shower, said hello to our cat and went to bed for about 5 hours. I think I'll head that way again- heck with getting our body clocks adjusted.
I've already posted much of what we saw and experienced but after some more reflection, I'll try to add some more comments about our overall Treasures of the Aegean experience. I'll try, but it was and will be hard to prevent the events getting there and home from affecting our feelings about this trip. Was it good?, Yes. Could it have been better? Definitely. Could Tauck/Windstar have done better in the current environment? TBD. One more comment before I go back to bed- at least we are not like our two very good friends and fellow travelers who are stuck cooling their heals for 10 days in an Athens hotel (not the Grande Bretagne). It took 2.5 hours yesterday for them to get breakfast which was mostly unidentifiable and inedible.
Good night!
What an Ordeal, I'm glad you finally made it home. Do relax and take your time to answer all questions.
Again, I'm glad you are back home and safe.
I suppose when making air arrangements so far in advance before a trip, we hope for the best and expect the worst. It’s hard to be prepared for anything like what you experienced. I don’t know how I would have endured all those hours of lack of sleep. In hindsight Alan, if your air was organized by the Tauck air department, do you think these type of issues would have been resolved in a timely manner while you were traveling if you would have contacted them and whether or not ? Of course, hindsight is 50/50 but good questions.
Very glad you are home Alan and with your bags, which could have been another headache.
I know you don’t usually book flights through Tauck, but I’m thinking they might not have been of help if many customers were in the same situation as you, their air dept.would have been overwhelmed like the regular agents are at the moment.
The one thing we always do now is get a car service to and from the airport, to heck with how much it costs. Whenever our flights have been delayed, they keep track and are there waiting. It would not be safe to drive with lack of sleep, I’ve worked too many night shifts to understand how dangerous it is to drive feeling very tired. Shoveling snow from around your car just once on return from vacation was enough way back when.
I don't think Tauck could have done much. It was a bad weekend to be flying. Per Usatoday, more than 1600 flights canceled Sunday, 1500 Saturday and 2300 Friday. Delta was the worst hit with 250 Saturday and 160 Sunday. Just glad you got home safe Alan.
So glad you got home and with the luggage !!!! I was very lucky going to London and coming back from France, the later was delayed for about 45 mts but we had already boarded, that made my connection in Atlanta a bit hairy mostly because it takes so long to get the luggage and they used 2 carousels which made it difficult and what's the use of having Sky Priority tags when you end up being one of the last bags.
Note to self - don't book a trip that leaves or returns on a holiday weekend.
This was not a early booking issue, but a last minute interruption. Based on what I read and heard on the news- Memorial Day weekend was a disaster for all the airlines, but especially for Delta. I haven't seen the details, but from Claudia's post and what little I did see, it seems like Delta ultimately cancelled well over 1000 flights. We were just a small statistic in what was evidently a major issue.
Again, I blame it on Delta and other airlines senior management and operations. When there are pilots, crew, and airplanes they do well. But, now they are trying to fly schedules that manning and aircraft availability can barely support. There is no slack in the system, no spare crews, no spare aircraft, or empty seats- in fact, they are attempting to fly full aircraft and even over-selling seats. The slightest hiccup rapidly snowballs with no remedy. Had JFK been a few hours closer, I would have driven there. As it is, we have a 2 hr drive to RDU.
Two weeks ago when our first outbound feeder flight was cancelled and the follow-on flight was international with limited flights per day/week, I asked if Delta could book us to JFK on another carrier . I was told none of them were accepting Delta bookings as they were having problems themselves. We physically went to each carrier at RDU and were told all their flights to JFK were booked solid.
Delta's second attempt to get us on a flight, was in standby- for an oversold flight!! We watched as the gate agent tried to find four people to voluntarily give up their seats to 4 ticketed passengers who didn't have seats and were trying to make international flights. No volunteers. How about money or an unrestricted gift card in the amount of $800 (four times what a main cabin ticket cost!!)- one taker. How about $1200!- one taker. Boarding was almost complete. Two others who had seats were holding back and hadn't boarded. They indicated they might be interested so the gate agent asked what it would take. One guy said $2000! The gate agent made a quick phone call - Bingo!! Not only did the last two holdouts get $2000 each, all four of those who gave up their seats got $2000 each!! Of course it didn't help us, we were the next two in line at the top of the stand-by list. We should have asked the agent to go on the plane and make the same offer, since most passengers had boarded and didn't hear what was transpiring or the final amount.
So, getting back to the question whether booking through Tauck would have made a difference, I doubt it. If planes are not flying or if they are, but are fully booked, it doesn't matter who is doing the booking, you ain't gonna get there.
I'm just glad none of the pre-tour excursions I arranged required a deposit or pre-payment. Missing the Segway at Sunset tour of Athens, the full day trip to Delphi, and the walking tour of Athens didn't cost me a thing.
Except for the memories and experiences that you were looking forward to, having researched each item and booked them well in advance of your tour.
Alan, you still haven’t recounted why you arrived late at the start of the tour.