Hey everyone,

Well here we are back in Atlanta after a trip up to Pennsylvania for a week to play the Pirates and the Phillies. While I wasn’t able to do much sightseeing on this past trip – one of our games in Pittsburgh was rained out and the weather was bad all week – so it’s definitely good to be back here in Atlanta for nearly two weeks. It’s very unusual for any team in the Majors to be home for more than a week, so this is a special chance for us to not only spend some quality time at home, but also pick up some wins against some great teams - the New York Mets and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

When in the airport I picked up a magazine that surveyed the best airports in the country. As someone who has traveled to more airports than I want to remember, I feel like I’m a pretty good judge of what cities are good to fly into, and what cities aren’t. Pittsburgh, for those of you who may be frequent travelers to the Keystone State, has one of the best airports in the United States. Last year, business travelers who wrote in to the magazine ranked it as the 9th best airport in the U.S.

I saw that Portland was ranked No. 1 (too bad Portland doesn’t have a Major League Baseball team), followed by Washington-Reagan, Tampa, and Milwaukee. I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a “business traveler” in the same respect that you all do (the Braves travel on one of Delta’s chartered planes), but I’m interested in knowing from you: what is your favorite airport, and why? I have my top three:

#1 - Atlanta: it’s my hometown airport and we fly so much in and out of there that I feel like I know everyone at Hartsfield. Plus, there is nothing like landing at home.

#2 - Green Bay: Austin Straubel International. In the off-season, I go up to Wisconsin to see family and we always fly into there. You know those places where you land and you think “I have nothing but really good memories from this place and this airport.” Well, this is the one for me. Plus, it doesn’t matter if it’s February, May, or October….at least 50 percent of the people in that airport will be wearing Green Bay Packers gear at one time. Besides, I’ve always wanted to know who Austin Straubel is. Ha.

#3 - Pittsburgh: Totally underrated. That place has everything. I’ve heard people try to fly into their as a layover just because the airport has so many places to shop. It’s a tie between Pittsburgh and Charlotte, but since Pittsburgh’s a baseball town I’m going with Pittsburgh.

Off-days

On Monday, we had our first ‘off-day’ in nearly two weeks. Baseball players do different things on off-days. Some go fishing, some go golfing, and some just relax with friends and family. One thing we all do, though, is stay away from picking up a bat and a mitt. This time, I took the day to just drive around the northern Atlanta suburbs with my wife, Catie. When you travel as much as I do, you forget how nice it is to just spend time with the ones you love, even if it’s doing something as simple as running errands. Yesterday, we did just that. It was a great off-day.

The Season

On the baseball field, we are right in the thick of things in the National League East. We’re two games out of first place at the moment, but we’re in 4^th place. The Marlins, Mets, and Phillies are all just a few games ahead of us. Even though we aren’t playing our best baseball, I’m confident that this home stand will be a great chance for us to pick up some games, especially because we are about to open up a four-game series with the New York Mets and we’ve been playing great baseball at home. Right now, we are one of the best teams in baseball at home, with a 16-5 record, and we need to capitalize on that. Tomorrow is actually Delta Day at the ballpark. I’m really looking forward to that because earlier this year I spent some time passing out free tickets at Delta’s Employee Block Party to as many kids as I could. I love seeing as many kids out at the ballpark as possible. Without a doubt, kids are our biggest supporters. It doesn’t matter if I hit a home run or I strike out with the bases loaded to a kid. They are always there supporting the Braves.

After we play the Mets and the Diamondbacks (who won the NL West last year), we head up to Milwaukee and Cincinnati, two teams in the NL Central that can really scare opponents. Certain road trips always seem to bring teams together, and Milwaukee seems to be one of those places. Maybe it’s because there isn’t as much to do in Milwaukee as there is to do, say, in New York or Washington, and because of that, guys on the Braves team seem to do the same thing. In Milwaukee, we tend to go out to eat after a game together at the same one or two restaurants, and the camaraderie then extends onto the baseball field. I’m hoping that will happen to us again this next road trip.

Enjoy your travels, wherever they may be. I’ll check back in with you all after Milwaukee. And remember, keep those comments coming.

Best,
Jeff

Delta is proud to be the Official Airline of The Atlanta Braves.

Earlier this year, an article appeared in The Washington Post by Joe Brancatelli called “How to Complain: Ten tips for getting just compensation when things go awry on the road.” Below is a deeper behind-the-scenes look at each of the areas he mentions (please bear with me, this will be a long post). I’m hopeful it may help you understand how we at Delta handle your concerns.

1. Go for Immediate Gratification

Yes! If you have time before you catch your next flight or leave the airport, ask the airport agent if you can resolve the situation on the spot. Explain to the nearest agent what happened, and how you would like to resolve the problem. Chances are you will be able to come to terms.

2. Take Good Notes

This is also great advice. Employee names, places, dates, boarding passes, and receipts are all helpful in determining where the service failure occurred, so managers can take corrective action with either the employee or a process that may not be working as planned. And rest assured, these complaints do get routed and read by managers here at Delta.

3. Act Fast

Mr. Brancatelli says that the longer you wait, the less chance you have of getting what you want. Don’t wait TOO long to write, since tickets expire and your documentation may get lost and some kinds of complaints – baggage claims for example – have specific deadlines for submitting the claim that you must meet under our contract of carriage, otherwise we can’t accept your claim.

4. Go with Paper

Actually, I disagree with this one. Submitting a concern via email benefits you, because it is more efficient to handle and easier to route to our other departments for follow-up. About one-third of all contacts we receive is hard copy correspondence, which has to be scanned into our customer contact system and routed. We have a faster response time goal on email, because the customer’s expectation is for a quicker reply to an email versus a written letter. I agree with Mr. Brancatelli’s recommendation not to send a handwritten letter. Legibility is a problem with scanned documents, making your letter even more difficult for us to read and respond to.

5. Send the Complaint to a Specific Person

It is the job of Customer Care to respond to these complaints, and our senior executives will just refer your letter to us. We will not take your complaint any more or less seriously.

6. Keep It Short and Polite

This is true. It is easy to get bogged down in the detail when you have to read a lengthy complaint, and we may miss an important point that could weigh in your favor. Shorter is better if possible.

7. Use Your Clout

If you are an elite member or able to sway a corporate travel purchase decision, Mr. Brancatelli recommends that you clearly state that up front. Most of our passengers are wise to this tip and quickly let us know what SkyMiles tier they are in. Our goal is to treat our passengers, status or no status, in the best way possible depending on their individual situation and in accordance with our corporate policy.

8. Ask for Something

The article suggests that you state clearly what type of compensation will make you happy. If the situation warrants, we will give transportation vouchers that can be used towards the purchase of a ticket. All compensation, from Crown Room passes to vouchers is governed by corporate policy, which is tied to the nature of the individual complaint.

So what does Customer Care compensate for? If your concern has not been already addressed at the airport, we will review the complaint and make a determination if compensation is due. The situations where we typically will offer some form of compensation fall generally into two categories: mechanical delays and severe service failures. Both of these are usually within our control, and we try to make the situation right. What constitutes a “severe service failure” is probably the hardest thing to understand, so here are two examples of severe service failures where we would most likely provide compensation.

If you missed a flight because we booked you incorrectly, or we failed to provide the wheelchair assistance you requested and you missed your connection, those are severe service failures. We do not compensate for weather or air traffic delays, which cause a lot of angst with passengers.

Expired travel vouchers are one of the most frequent problems that we see. Many people mistakenly believe that the voucher is valid for one year from the date of travel, not the date it was issued (if you have any transportation credit vouchers in your sock drawer, dig them out and check the expiration date!)

9. Use Your Big Plastic Stick

The article recommends that you dispute your credit card charge, but I’ve seen few instances where this works. If we got you there and back, the transportation you purchased has been delivered. There are instances where we have not delivered on a service that a customer paid for, and when that occurs, we will make it right. This can be a gray area, so here’s an example: If you paid for a First Class seat, and due to a change of equipment, we now only have coach seating to offer you, we would refund the difference between the two fares and apologize for your inconvenience.

10. Don’t Give Up

Unless we made a mistake on the initial review of your complaint the decision in most cases stands.

So that in a nutshell is how to negotiate the land of Delta Customer Care. I hope that the only correspondence I will ever see from you is kudos for the wonderful service the Delta team delivers.

Was this information helpful to you? Do you have any tips to add?

Happy Travels!

Nancy
Senior Analyst
Customer Care