Experiencing US Immigration at JFK airport is right up there with a trip to the Turkish Postal Service. Both experiences are to be avoided if at all possible.
After an 11 hour flight and dreading the hellhole that is JFK immigration, we walked down the jetway to find a perky Delta agent holding a sign with Kevin’s name on it. We greeted her with trepidation thinking something terrible had happened. Instead, it turns out when you are a Delta Diamond member you get your own Delta Angel. They don’t call themselves angels, but we do after having one.
The DA for short, escorted us through Immigration and Customs like we were royalty. Like Delta’s non stop flights to Amsterdam and LA from Hartford, CT that each only lasted about a month before being cancelled, a dedicated agent for every Diamond member can’t last long. Maybe the program is already cancelled and the angels have ascended back to heaven or the Delta Lounge—wherever they came from. But, today in our hour of need, one was there in the jetway waiting just for us.
With our own dedicated Angel in the lead, we blew past the stopped line of passengers waiting at the top of the broken escalator for directions. Then with expert dodging and weaving, we cut right to the front of the packed hallway to be whisked through Immigration. By the time we got to baggage, our angel had pulled one suitcase off the belt and was looking for the other. Our Angel cut what would easily have been a 1 1/5 to 2 hour, murderous wait in line to about 15 minutes.
We never learned her name but it was like getting bumped to business class on a flight to Tokyo. Heck, it was even better. Let’s just say that neither of us are at our best waiting in line at US Customs after an all night flight. And, of course the only reasonable people to take out our frustrations on, is one another. We’re too kind to take it out on perfect strangers and too terrified of the Immigration people. Our marriage survived another day because of our angel.
