Tag Archives for delta air lines.
Starting June 1 they’re going to restrict club access in two ways: no access until 3 hours prior to departure of your first flight, and access will be for departure only.
Here’s video of a Delta pilot crawling through the window of a Boeing 737. Apparently if you’re locked out of the cockpit you can use the window that can be opened from the outside to get in.
Pilots are one of the few unionized work groups at Delta. They’re complaining that Delta gave non-union flight attendants a raise by adding pay for boarding time (in addition to their pre-pandemic raise, post-pandemic raise, and special profit-sharing).
However Delta cannot unilaterally change the pay of their pilots. Their pilots literally agreed to – voted on – a contract that paid more for time flying the plane and didn’t calculate pay including boarding time. Not only haven’t pilots made boarding pay a priority, they’ve chosen the current arrangement because it benefits senior union members at the expense of junior ones.
Delta’s decision to pay flight attendants for the time boarding aircraft sent shockwaves through the industry. Traditionally flight attendant union-bargained contracts pay flight attendants a higher wage for the flight itself, and don’t calculate time spent boarding. Thus, many flight attendants feel they ‘don’t get paid’ for that time.
I’ve heard from cabin crew at several airlines envious of their counterparts at Delta, who are seeing this new pay on top of raises that started right before the pandemic, on top of special profit sharing bonuses announced earlier this year, and on top of raises that go into effect May 1.
With travel’s return Delta is having trouble. Here’s the new Detroit A43 club – at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday. Contra American Airlines there are no lines to get in, just passengers being told to go away. This isn’t a one-off, they have a pre-made banneer to put out.
When we see dirty planes we wonder whether the things we can’t see are being being handled well. When we see broken planes we wonder whether maintenance we can’t see is being handled well. The connection isn’t always true but reasonable.
One of the odder dirty plane photos I’ve seen on twitter lately is paper towels stuffed into the aircraft ceiling on Delta. Condensation was leaking, and this is the airline’s solution to keep it from dripping on passengers. They didn’t want to take a plane out of service and cancel flights, and it wasn’t a mechanical issue that raised safety concerns. But, as the passenger posting on twitter notes, they also weren’t… changing the paper towels between flights.
Delta is going to start paying flight attendants for time spent boarding aircraft to coincide with moving up boarding time on domestic mainline narrowbody flights by 5 minutes (although the pay increases apply to flight attendants working all flights).
Starting June 2 Delta will begin boarding for domestic narrowbody aircraft 40 minutes prior to departure. And they’ll take off prior to scheduled departure time more often, too.
Delta has made a move that’s going to be a huge hit with employees, and engender jealousy across the industry. Flight attendants are getting a raise, and it’s coming in the form of addressing a real sore spot in compensation. This could keep unionization at bay, while trolling employees of their biggest competitors.
Over the weekend the operation of Southwest, American, Spirit, JetBlue and Delta all melted down. There was bad weather in Florida, and some IT issues, but things were systematically worse than one would expect even given these issues. United was relatively spared.
Getting through to airlines was nearly impossible. Delta has recently made it harder.
A passenger posted video to Reddit and to twitter showing a pilot they were sitting near on a Frontier Airlines flight taking photos of a flight attendant’s legs and other body parts – trying to be sly, hiding his camera. He’s been busted.
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 »
