Delta's New Exotic Cocktails: Unpublished Strings Attached Make It Another Big Lie

Friday, June 2, 2006 - After being delayed all day getting home from Columbus, Ohio (I went to the airport at 11am and got to Raleigh after 11pm) thanks to weather and the sheer incompetence of American Airlines, I ended up on Delta flying through Atlanta. Because of my Delta Platinum and Five Million Miler status, I was upgraded to first class ATL/RDU.

Feeling a tiny bit better about my 12-hour ordeal that at least I'd have a comfortable seat and a mixed drink on my last leg to Raleigh, I boarded the plane and was shocked to discover this lie from Delta’s idiot marketing wizards about the new exotic cocktails supposedly being offered in first class:

The new cocktails are prominently advertised on page 128 of the May edition of SKY Magazine, but when you order one on the ground, as I did tonight, I was told by the Lead Flight Attendant that Delta has restricted serving them only on flights over 4 hours and never on the ground during boarding.

There is nothing in SKY on page 128, no fine print or asterisks, where the drinks are described, that says anything about any restrictions.

Of course, I was exhausted, and vulnerable, and just wanted to try one of their special drinks and relieve my stress, so this was like a slap in the face.

Delta claims to be offering these great new drinks, but then really doesn’t. As we all know, almost no domestic flights are more than 4 hours. It’s a bait-and-switch, a mirage, just another big airline lie.