I knew the stress would creep in the second the plane landed as my new bride and I returned from a wonderful honeymoon in Rome. It was a small inconvenience — especially in the light of a wonderful wedding to my wonderful bride with our wonderful family and friends (too much wonderful?) — but it’s still the kind of thing that makes your blood boil. Allow me to bitch…

The short version: Delta lost my suitcase, couldn’t get it back to me for four days, damaged it and a number of its contents, and now wants me to take a trip all the way out to the airport (this is New York City, folks, so that’s a $30 taxi ride each way and God knows how much time depending on the hour) for the pleasure of their company in order to verify that my bag is really destroyed and that I’m not just a scam artist who fabricated their massive incompetence and ineptitude with customer service.

God, do I hate Delta right about now.

Waiting at the baggage claim for an hour was bad enough. Other passengers had suffered the same fate, as far as their baggage’s lostitude, and one guy in particular was waving his cane around menacingly, as if ready to shishkebab the first Delta agent — I’ve mentioned the airline’s name, right, Delta? — who might suggest he start filling out hours worth of paperwork in order to receive minimal compensation for his various worldly possessions. I wouldn’t have minded the distraction.

Anyway, the next couple days were spent trying to figure out where my bag might have gotten off to — we’d had a direct flight from Rome to JFK, so it couldn’t have gone far. Delta’s online system for tracking your baggage is, shall we say, lacking. Their phone system is not much better. My experience with them culminated on Saturday, with me on the phone screaming at a Delta agent, “All I want to know is which side of the Atlantic my baggage is on!!!” This actually elicited a chuckle from the poor woman on the other end. I’m glad. It’s not the operator’s fault her company has a terrible baggage system. I like to entertain as I abuse. (Just ask John McCain.)

Anyway, it eventually came to light that Delta doesn’t actually monitor which bags are on which plane — this strikes me as possibly problematic from an airport security standpoint, but I digress — they could only tell me that the bag had been scheduled to be on a flight that got into JFK on Friday afternoon. “We don’t scan the bags as they go on the plane,” a supervisor explained to me. “Well, there’s your problem,” I pointed out.

Anyway, the bag was finally delivered by Delta’s service on Sunday morning (two days to clear customs, apparently, another mystery). As I’d been at someone else’s wedding out of town on Saturday night and stayed over — and Delta never gave me a heads up as to what day/week/month/geologic era they might deliver my bag — they had to wake up my downstairs neighbors to do so. Sorry, guys. Delta sucks. Have I mentioned that this was Delta?

Anyway, the damage was massive…

There was the handle, with a button ripped off:

There was the side of the bag, most crucially, with a gigantic gash:

The gigantic gash opened up the interior contents to God-knows-what elements. The main casualty was a very nice shaving kit given to me a while ago by my mother:

So, having delayed my bag four days and damaged it and its contents beyond repair, what was Delta’s response? A number of perfunctory “we’re sorry about your bag”s and a stubborn insistence that the only way to deal with this is a trip to the airport, despite my having kindly documented the damage in the photo montage you see above.

I’m thinking suing them in small claims court is much more convenient and satisfying.

I guess it’s true what they say: Don’t fly Delta.

It’s wonderful advice.