JFK? Never again.

A lightning tour of  New York

With some exceedingly dry humour from our tour guide

Then off to JFK nice and early to catch our flights - do you recognize these? (explained here)

JFK - and especially the Delta Terminal - we arrived about three and a half hours early and then had to queue for about two hours to get through security - everyone wnet through the same channel and they kept on letting priority passengers jump the queue - eventually some passengers were taken by Delta staff to another terminal to be security scanned - as we were near the front we stayed and waited another 30 minutes - only to get to the front of the queue and be stalled again as multiple priority passengers were processed.  When I protested I got a "long look" from security - not wanting to get sent to the back or no-fly-ed - I shut up.
 

Joce had payed for us to use the Delta Lounge* - we had about 20 minutes in there and then we were called to the gate - where we sat for a long time, then boarded the plane - where we sat for a very very long time

*Don't bother - freezing cold, pathetic food, if there were showers I never had time to find them/use them - the ladies at lounge reception were very polite and they gave me nice chocolates.

After about an hour we are now about 10 from the front of the line - in all we spent nearly as much time from check-in to take-off as we did in the air.  We were late in to LHR and I missed the chance to parkrun

Delta sent me a "how did we do?" questionnaire and KLM sent me a very nice apology:

Dear Mr. Williams,

Thank you for your communication of 6th May 2012. We would like to inform you that KLM handles Customer Care correspondence for Delta Air Lines in Europe. Therefore, on behalf of Delta Air Lines, we would like to apologise for the inconvenience that you and Mrs. Andersson experienced when traveling on flight DL003 from New York JFK to London Heathrow on 4th May 2012.

We are sorry to learn of your disappointment with the security service at New York JFK airport. Whilst we would naturally hope for a smooth and stress free journey for all our passengers, there are times when peak travel periods mean that security check procedures take longer than usual. Unfortunately, such situations are outside of any airline's control since they come under the direct jurisdiction of the police authorities and are carried out on passengers of all airlines.

Having said that, we work in close cooperation with the airport representatives and we can assure you that your comments have been noted and will be used to improve our joint services in the future.

Further we regret to learn that due to computer error, flight DL003 departed from the gate 5 minutes delayed. Regrettably due to this delay, appointed slot for the take-off was lost and pilots had to wait for confirmation from the Air Traffic Control to take-off. We are sincerely sorry for the inconvenience that this situation caused.  You have our commitment that we do out utmost to minimise delays and improve our services in the future.

Despite these experiences, we are pleased to learn that you were satisfied with the flight and service provided by Delta Air Lines. We do hope the above explanation will help soften the negative impact of this situation, and that despite the latest, unsatisfactory experience you and Mrs. Andersson will afford us another opportunity to serve you onboard one of our flights to your entire satisfaction, some time in the near future.

Yours sincerely,

T. Nurro (Ms.)
Customer Care Europe


But of course I have choices - where to fly from and whether to fly at all.

As far as the US is concerned, experiences over the past 20 years have led me to choose "not to fly at all".