Dear Delta Airlines

I would like to take this opportunity to complain about the way you handle baggage and security lines in your terminal at La Guardia airport in New York.

Yesterday, Monday, August 16, I had a flight from La Guardia to Memphis scheduled for 6:45am. Given that I knew any airport in the New York City area would be busy, I showed up at 4:40am, over two hours early. I quickly checked in at the kiosk and then went to stand in the line to hand my checked bag to a Delta employee. Here is where the problems started.

The line was moving rather slowly, since there were only four employees doing baggage checks. Then, to make matters worse, around 4:55am the contract employees managing the line started calling out, "Does anyone have a flight at 6:00?" Everyone who raised their hand were then allowed to cut to the front of the line. This happened again five minutes later when they called out for 6:05am flight, and every five minutes after that. Then when I got to the security line, the same thing happened again. The net result was that it took an hour and fifteen minutes to get through lines that were not that long.

I've flown often and through very busy airports – O'Hare, Heathrow, Los Angeles, Schiphol. I've seen both good and not-so-good check-in procedures. But yesterday's was by far the worse. By allowing people who arrive late to skip to the head of the line, you are teaching all other people there that in the future they should just show up late to get special treatment. In fact, you are incenting them to be late.

I now know that if I ever fly through La Guardia again on your airline, I will just show up late and plead some sob story and get to go to the head of the line. Which sort of makes all your SkyMiles Medallion express lines worthless, doesn't it?