Just yesterday, Delta was assessed a $2 million civil penalty for violating rules protecting air travelers with disabilities, the largest non-safety-related penalty ever assessed against a U.S. airline.

Delta not only produced a planeload of complaints from disabled passengers, it also failed to provide an adequate written response to many of them, DOT said.

The employee retraining may not be very long – just one day – but Delta promises it will be intensive. Employees will be reminded that their job is to assist passengers, not just get rid of them, a Delta official said.

Whether one day will be enough may be open to question. Delta has ruffled a lot of feathers among its customers.

“Delta obviously does not care about it’s customers and actually went out of their way to screw me and many other travelers,” complained Ashley of Lakewood Ranch, Fla., after her flight was canceled and she was stranded in Atlanta with no assistance from Delta.

“Whether they were clueless or apathetic, either way it looks bad for Delta,” she said of the Delta workers who ignored her requests for information and assistance.

And then there are the “elite” passengers – the relative handful of frequent flyers who contribute more than a quarter of the airline’s revenue. Employees will be reminded to treat road warriors like the professional travelers they are.

Other issues

Of course, not all of Delta’s problems can be blamed on its employees. The airline has been trying to integrate the operations and staff of Northwest Airlines after their merger and it’s been a year of bad weather, high fuel costs and so forth.

Delta admits it has sometimes been slow to repair airplanes because of a lack of parts, leading to flight cancellations. Also, airports have been under-staffed and Delta says it is hiring an additional 1,000 workers to bolster front-line customer service.

via Delta Sending Its Agents Back to Charm School.