Delta Laying Off All Asia-Based Flight Attendants

by Gary Leff

New and notes from around the interweb:

  • With Delta de-hubbing Tokyo Narita, their Asia-based flight attendants lose their jobs. They’ll be closing the Tokyo flight attendant base and offering transfers to the Customer Engagement Center (reservations) at Narita. These are some of the best crew in the Delta system.

  • How did I miss the drama at Aimia which used to own Aeroplan and still owns 49% of Aeromexico’s frequent flyer program?

  • When will the Boeing 737 MAX return to service? Expert opinion is split, December – March

  • UK man denied a passport because his name is potentially offensive

  • MGM is suing the federal government to overturn approval for a competitor casino to open in Connecticut. They don’t want competition. But if they lose maybe they can just make up the difference with higher resort fees.

  • Marriott now lets you track their airport shuttle using their online app [WSJ] at 15 hotels (across 4 airports) with plans to extend to 200 hotels by end of year. Did you just miss the shuttle, or is it about to get here? That’s the age old question we all have and ringing the front desk rarely gets you a truthful answer.

    Marriott assures that “the tracker was developed by a different group inside Marriott separate from the technology group working on the [SPG] integration.”

    If the tracker is available at your hotel, you’ll see it listed with the amenities on the app. To use the tracker, you do have to be a member of Marriott’s loyalty program and book directly at Marriott or through a corporate travel manager—the service doesn’t extend to bookings made through online travel agencies.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Being laid off from Delta just opens the door for them to join a real airline considering the only people who fly Delta will be dead soon from old age.

  2. Was always shocked at the excellent service by Delta’s Narita based FAs — flying on NRT-Asia legs was like flying on a completely different, world class (think CX, SQ quality) airline. Would make an excellent Business School Case Study how a single organization could have such completely different service cultures.

  3. We flew Delta’s SIN-NRT route in Delta One in June 2019. The Flight Attendants were fantastic. Especially the American FA attending me and the Asia FA attending my wife. They were much more energetic than the ones we had on the next flight, NRT-DTW. I told them that they were excellent as we left the plane.

  4. Are there no SkyTeam flights out of Haneda? Are there any other airlines at Haneda that will allow Delta to check luggage through to the destination (I am thinking SIN, BKK, or KUL)?

  5. Likewise on the great service on UA some years ago when they had a base there. Yes, I said great service on UA.

  6. All US airlines should hire only Asians in customer service positions. With exceptions of course, Americans can’t grasp customer service. I see this when I get treated for my epilepsy.

  7. Airfarer, United still has a base of around 300 flight attendants in Narita. They also have flight attendant bases in London Heathrow, Frankfurt, and Hong Kong.

  8. that’s terrible. Changing planes in NRT meant going from grumpy and old to something else entirely. I can’t believe they are just walking away from all the rights Northwest picked up due to the “late unpleasantness” as Queen Elizabeth would say.

  9. @David, they are walking away from “all the rights Northwest picked up” because that is not the reality of flying today. When flying to Asia people don’t want to add an extra 2-3+ hrs of time connecting in NRT for an onward intra-Asia flight, when they don’t have to/have other options. With so many direct US to Asia options; think – Singapore Airlines non stop to SIN, Cathy Pacific non stop to HKG, EVA or China Airlines non stop to Taipei, there really is much less demand/interest in itineraries that require a layover/connection. Plus much of Delta’s intra-Asia flying was on old worn out 767-300ERs, not exactly on par with what the other carriers were flying and certainly not very appealing if paying for premium cabin seating. The industry has moved on and Delta is just adjusting to that and catching up with the new realities of flying to Asia.

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