As most of you know, I was facing the situation of how and when to return home from SXM just as many others are as well. My wife made 2 trips to the DAY airport, Sun. & again Mon. to see if she could get any information from the Delta agents as I was finding nothing online and we were concerned about my Fri. 3/20 departure. She was told by a supervisor in DAY on Sun. to stay with the 3/20 return, it was scheduled and only thing she could change me to was 1st class on Thur. She also assured my wife it was on Delta to get me home if they cancelled. Very early Sun. I received the cancellation email. I got online very early and was finding nothing. My wife then want back to DAY and was basically treated poorly and blow off by the Delta staff.

While she was there I found a flight on United and asked her to go to their counter and book it. They said they could not do so, it had to be done online or on the phone. I was able to book online later and I am probably out the cost of this ticket due to their restrictions as I cancelled it yesterday. I had later in the morning had a flight option pup up on Delta for Tuesday that got me home in 1 day. In many cases it was impossible to use a credit card due to the connection so if I did find something, I couldn't get the transaction to process. I found a way around it eventually.

This brings up to the Delta experience yesterday. I was expecting a full flight and they were asking for volunteers. Last I heard, the offer was $800 and they get you off on the next scheduled Delta flight. The flight was loaded with 3 empty seats and 3-4 dogs. None of the dogs were in carriers and two of them were in the #50+ range. No service dog vests (of which many are fake) and nothing would indicate they were service dogs but pets of what appeared to be medical school students. Another dog had a vest indicting "emotional support". Now, I know a lot about dogs and training and personally have known multiple TRUE and properly trained REAL service dogs. This dog had a prong/pinch collar on along with what is known as an "e collar". Nice word for shock collar! Any properly trained dog that truly provided service/assistance would NOT have these collars on. One dog was a row behind me and across the aisle and was in the owners lap or on the floor and I guess rode for free. The dogs were not a problem that I noticed, just another way of people abusing the very loosely written ADA rules. to fly their pets for free.

After boarding and waiting at least 30 minutes without movement the pilot comes on and announces they had to wait for 3 US citizens who were on the inbound flight of ONLY 5 people and were not permitted entry to SXM due to the PM's travel restrictions that took effect yesterday. A few minutes later it is announced not only do we have to wait for the 3 people who NEVER should have been allowed to board in ATL but we had to wait for their luggage! Just about 55 minutes into it, they are onboard and directed to the only 3 vacant seats (one in Delta Comfort and she got the benefits of being in the section) on the plane. An hour past schedule we are off.

It was obvious the entire crew was NOT happy with the situation. I asked a very nice flight attendant how many people on the inbound flight. Her response was "just 5 and 3 should not have been allowed on in ATL". I guess the JFK flight had a total of 2 people on it and one of them should have been denied boarding in the US as they were returned as well. The flight attendant praised the SXM "station manager" of Delta for working with the SXM government to get as many Delta customer out as soon as possible. She was also very frustrated with how this played out and a gate agent (or possibly more than one) in ATL for boarding these people. She indicated it would result in a "stern" conversation with their supervisor in ATL and also could possibly jeopardize the ability of Delta to continue to get flights in to get stranded people out. I give high marks for SXM immigration for catching these passengers from entering the country. I also view it as an act of total incompetence on the part of Delta employees in ATL for allowing this to happen. The delay likely cost several people their connections on what was an already stressful chain of events.

We landed just a few minutes late. From the time we hit the group to me retrieving my bag was 35 min. Customs and immigration was very smooth but a long walk to get to it. Security was another 35 minutes and was packed. I am sure passengers with anything less than a 2 hour connection did not make it last night. TSA was very backed up but to expedite things people did not have to remove anything other than jackets and have empty pockets. We were basically told, "Put everything in your carry on and it would be scanned".

I am very glad to have made it home yesterday and will deal with my cancelled and rebooked Delta ticket and also the United ticket I cancelled in the near future.

On a side note, PLEASE pay attention to what you are doing. They were very lax in C & I and also TSA with regard to allowing cell phone use but when you are holding up the line, running into people and basically not paying any attention other than to your texting, it creates other problems. This was constant last night and caused a very non fluid flow of people through the lines and adding unnecessary time for those with tight connections. Same way in the grocery this morning and causing things to be worse than what they actually were.

Good luck to those still trying to get home and to my friends traveling out today.