Driss-A-Blog

JFK is known for having pretty good terminals, clean and fairly large. All except for Delta. Delta lives in Terminal 3, the Terminal That Time Forgot. It's an itty-bitty terminal that surely was meant for nothing larger than puddlejumper airlines.

I'd taken the subway to the AirTrain, and took it to Terminal 3. Now, in every other terminal, you walk across a bridge, perhaps take an escalator or two, and you're at ticketing. But not Terminal 3. When you leave the Terminal 3 AirTrain station, you're at ground level on a sidewalk. Task one: figure out where to go. There are a few signs posted, but not clearly, and if you're not paying attention, you'll be lost. Task two: don't get run over. Following the signs leads you on a path. There is no sidewalk. You'll be sharing the road with cars, so please be careful. Task three: pull your luggage a quarter mile uphill. Seriously. The path to the terminal is up an incline. I hope you didn't pack very heavily.

I hadn't, actually. For the two week trip, I'd decided to try going carry-on only. Yes, I'd have to do some laundry while I was there, but it was worth a try. I thus was able to make it to the terminal building. Where there are maybe four ticket counters.

The inside was mobbed. About a hundred passengers with luggage were crammed into a space roughly triple the size of my living room. It was 50 minutes to the flight, and with only two agents helping check people in, I didn't have a chance. After a few moments, though, I spied some e-ticket machines off on the side, marked “Carry-On Only”. I quickly took the opportunity to check in, grateful that I'd packed for carry-on, as it was the only thing that allowed me to catch my flight.

Of course, on the way back, I couldn't carry on my luggage. Not because of any increase in its size, but the fact that I didn't feel like throwing out all my liquid toiletries. So I checked the suitcase, and got on the flight. For all the commotion about increased security, things went fine. Until I arrived at Delta's Terminal From Hell.

There were two luggage carousels, D1, and D2. There were perhaps a hundred people waiting for D1 to start spitting out their luggage. There was a waist-high pile of luggage taking up half the room around my carousel, carousel D2. I looked at the ticket on one of the suitcases going around the carousel and found that it wasn't from my flight. I looked briefly through the massive pile of suitcases, and to my horror found a few marked as being from my flight. What!? I quickly waded through the entire pile looking at all the bags to check to see if mine was there. It wasn't.

So I waited for my luggage to come. Occasionally some people from my flight spotted their luggage on the carousel and claimed it, but most of us just stood there. It was now 6 o'clock, and our slightly-ahead-of-time 5 o'clock arrival didn't matter anymore. There was no point in complaining, as there were already two dozen people in line for the Baggage Service Office. From the hundred people waiting at D1, they were the ones to stand in line at the office to find out how they were supposed to get their baggage. I overheard something about carousel D1 being broken.

I was only slightly more fortunate, for though I had a working carousel no new bags had shown up for twenty minutes. Clack, clack. Clack, clack.

About 6:30 the baggage attendant pulled the remaining bags off carousel D2. No one had claimed them because they weren't from our flight. So I took a moment to look at the bags in the pile. I counted bags from no fewer than eighteen different flights: DL 1864 (my flight), but also flights 518, 1803, 5278, 4964, 1819, 5297, 5236, 4763, 4997, 1448, 5373, 725, 5075, 872, 1861, 5518, and 5471. Exasperated, I joined the line to the service office, which now only had half-a-dozen people from my flight in it.

At 6:40 I got to the desk, where I gave my luggage claim ticket to the clerk. She tapped at the computer and said, “It's in the back; we couldn't get all of the bags onto the carousel.” She disappeared. I looked at the guide to describing lost luggage with two-digit codes. At 6:50 she finally returned with my bag, and I could leave.

I'm sure that Delta doesn't intend to alienate their customers by wasting their time with such amazingly bad experiences. It's probably Terminal 3 being too small for a real airline. Well, one thing I intend to do is never take a Delta flight out of JFK, and perhaps never take any of their flights again. Perhaps that'll help Delta with their space problem.