Tag Archives for delta air lines.
Delta Air Lines confirmed during its second quarter earnings call a plan for ‘basic business.’ Just like they have ‘unbundled’ economy class, offering basic economy that doesn’t allow changes or mileage-earning and where you don’t get to pick your own seat, they view ‘unbundling’ of the features of business class a new step in maximizing revenue from customers.
Delta Air Lines is earning half the industry’s profit. They had a 13.6% operating margin and made $1.3 billion in the last quarter. That’s great – except that both figures are down year-over-year and the airline lowered its guidance for the third quarter as well. Their stock lost 8% of its value at the open on Thursday’s morning’s announcement, though it gained half of that back by the end of the trading day.
The airline’s spin is that there’s too much capacity, and the problem is other airlines, but the industry is correcting itself. In other words, the problem isn’t Delta, and going forward Delta won’t have a problem. I don’t think this actually makes sense.
Union organizers at Delta are lambasting management for not sticking up for flight attendants who wear Palestine flag pins. In fact, they’re publicly standing up for flight attendants who have been wearing Palestine flag pins.
Data from Aviation analytics company Cirium shows that American Airlines offers the most seats of any airline this summer. Using schedule data for this month, they edge out Southwest Airlines as the largest carrier by the measure. Both American and Southwest have a heavily domestic-focused network, and don’t fly their seats as far as United Airlines (or Delta).
Overall domestic scheduled seats are up 6% year-over-year despite aircraft delivery delays, especially by Boeing. Seats are up 7.8% across the Atlantic this month with Delta just a hair’s breadth behind United Airlines.
Delta Air Lines and Riyadh Air, which launches next year, have signed a partnership agreement “to expand connectivity and premium travel options across North America, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and beyond.” This will enable Delta to launch service to Riyadh (!).
A passenger on Friday’s Delta flight 1245 from Boston to West Palm Beach shared a photo of a flight attendant wearing a Palestine flag pin. This has seemed to be more common among Delta employees than other airlines. It violates their uniform standards but they also haven’t spoken to enforcing those – whether because they want to avoid controversy amongst cabin crew during a unionization drive, or out of fear they would alienate customers at their Detroit hub.
Delta Air Lines flight 136 from Detroit to Amsterdam diverted to New York on Tuesday night after a couple dozen people became ill from the “spoiled food” on board. This was airplane food!
It looks as though Delta is refusing to let a child sit in the seat they’d purchased for the child but that’s not true. The passenger was technically in the wrong here – though the airline handled it badly, and ultimately compensated the customer.
Yesterday a Delta business class award from the U.S. to Europe would have cost 50,000 points and $5.60. Now there are $1,000 surcharges and prices up to 77,500 for non-stop flights. Los Angeles – New York – London can cost 127,500 points.
A passenger flying New York to Hawaii paid for an extra legroom seat but once on board, a pregnant woman started asking people to switch seats with her. She was assigned a seat farther back in standard economy. And she was shaming people that refused, saying they “wouldn’t understand what it feels like to be a woman carrying a baby in this summer heat.”
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 »
