Turkey Travelogue: Delta sucks

Before I get started on the fun stuff, I want to get this part out of the way.

The short version is this: Delta Airlines is horrible. It really sucks. Our experience with them was, at best, extremely frustrating. Next time you're flying, if it is possible to use another airline, by all means, do so, even if it costs a bit more. I'll certainly do my best to avoid Delta in the future. They ruined the first day of our trip, getting us to our destination 9 hours overdue, cost us a huge chunk of change by causing us to miss our Turkish Airlines connection, and then also failed to get us home on time at the end of our trip. If you'd like to read all the gory details, go ahead and click through the jump...

[To be clear, the problem with Delta isn't the good people who work for the airline -- the agents and stewards and pilots who do get us to where we're going (though some of them are understandably surly). It's the management and bloat at the top of the corporation that has reduced this once proud fleet to a bunch of old, rickety rattletraps with flaky indicators, broken toilets and a hopeless inability to meet a schedule, even in fine weather. No matter the amount he makes, Delta's CEO, Richard Anderson, is ridiculously overpaid.]