Tag Archives for delta air lines.
A status match campaign that only offers a match, and processes the match is… ok. But it’s also a wasted opportunity. The match needs to be as fast and seamless as possible, and then needs to follow up with the customer to help them understand and use their benefits and see why their choice to shift their business is a good one for them.
A passenger in the Boston airport Delta Air Lines Sky Club locked herself in the bathroom when a stall’s handle fell off the door. Surprisingly, despite kicking and banging on the door, no one responded to her calls for help. Desperate, she pulled out her cell phone and placed a call to the police.
Delta wants us to believe that they are just trying to solve a problem – that there are too many elites for the benefits available like upgrades and club access. They have no choice! Victims of their own success!
The truth is that planned Delta changes weren’t about scarcity of benefits or too many Diamonds. It was all about squeezing customers for more American Express spend because Delta is trying to move from $7 billion in revenue from American Express to $10 billion. But they went too far.
There was a 352% increase in negative online commentary about Delta following their announced changes, and that’s compared to the week of the Delta diarrhea plane.
Two grandparents traveling with their 11 month old grandson were met by police on arrival in Detroit on Sunday after a flight attendant reported them for human trafficking.
They had flown in from Punta Cana, where the grandmother had spoken at a conference. Dee Dee Ohara Blizard is Black, and her husband is Japanese. And the child’s skin color looks different than theirs. That appears to have raised alarms with Delta cabin crew.
What Delta forgot about its customers, but has since been reminded: if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out immediately. However, if the frog is placed in tepid water that is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. You’re the frog.
Bastian has previously said that the changes to elite status and lounge access are not the end of what members can expect (“over the next several years we’ll announce additional changes to qualification and to how a mile is awarded”). And, of course, even after those changes were announced they quietly devalued SkyMiles further by raising the price of Mexico-originating awards (one of the bets values that had remained in the program for use of miles). Mileage devaluations continue even as they talk about “modifications” to status and lounge access changes they’ve recently announced.
In Mel Brooks’ “The Producers,” Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder intentionally produce a flop on Broadway. They oversold shares in the production many times, and planned to run away with investors’ money. In the 1967 film “Springtime For Hitler and Germany” was an ironic, surprise smash hit. In 2023, Delta’s changes to the SkyMiles program are producing equal and opposite amounts of outrage.
Delta is demanding more from customers without giving them any more in return, and rewarding them with a currency that it worth less than what customers can earn elsewhere. And their bet is that a small subset of cardmembers will increase their spend so much as to offset those who cancel and the bulk of cardmembers for whom the changes aren’t designed to incent spend.
After Delta Air Lines announced it was going all Keyser Söze on its elite frequent flyers, and acting like the master manipulator who leaves no loose ends, even if it means betraying those who trust him, there’s a clear opening for competing airlines.
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 »
