Tag Archives for delta air lines.
Lines to get into Delta clubs are a phenomenon unmatched by other airlines. New York JFK seems to be the worst. In fact things are so bad there are reports of the airline bringing food out to passengers they’re waiting so long.
Two days ago there was Delta business class award space to Zurich and now there’s space from New York JFK to Amsterdam and from Salt Lake City to both Paris and Amsterdam in business class for two passengers for January through March.
Delta Air Lines is offering generous business class saver award availability on its New York JFK – Zurich flight in November. Here’s availability for four passengers using 50,000 Virgin Atlantic miles apiece to take this Delta flight.
The Association of Flight Attendants – Communications Workers of America (AFA-CWA) is trying to organize flight attendants at Delta. They are promising more money, less work and a pony. It costs them nothing to make promises, which are almost certainly not true. In reality, Delta’s cabin crew will pay for union representation, they won’t make as much money as they will under Delta’s unique model in the industry, and their work lives will be worse.
Every Delta flight attendant should ask, are cabin crew represented by AFA-CWA actually happier and better off at the myriad of airlines where the union represents them now – like United Airlines, Spirit, Frontier, and Mesa?
Airlines are one of the most heavily unionized industries in the country. That works out well for customers and investors at Southwest, but less well at other airlines. Delta, the other historically strong performer, is mostly non-union. Their largest unionized work group is their pilots. Delta’s dispatchers are also unionized.
The biggest flight attendants union is working hard to change that – even as they publish data that 97% of flight attendants they represent at United are deeply unhappy.
On Monday July 25 Delta flight 9923 from New York JFK to Accra, Ghana headed out over the Atlantic and then diverted back due to fuel issues. The flight had already been delayed from the day before, reportedly due to a sick pilot, and was operated as a special extra section.
However the second attempt at the flight took a turn for the worse. A couple of hours out over the Atlantic the captain announced that the Boeing 767 had a fuel issue, and that they would have to return to New York. Emergency crews met the plane on arrival.
80,000 miles for Delta travel between New York and Austin. How about 90,000 miles? Those aren’t saver award prices, but they’re now being charged by Air France KLM’s Flying Blue.
The summer before the global pandemic, Delta Air Lines revamped its long haul economy product. In a sign that they had forgotten they were an airline they introduced amenity kits, welcome drinks and hot towels, and course-based dining in economy class.
To show just how different of an airline Delta is now, compare course-based dining in economy with this.
In March 2019 Delta CEO Ed Bastian said the airline would offer free wifi within “a year or two.” They needed to ensure they had enough bandwidth for everyone to use it, since not charging would mean far greater usage.
Delta tested just how much people used wifi when it’s free and found that their Gogo inflight internet couldn’t handle it without degrading service. The airline has since moved to retrofit planes with ViaSat internet which works faster. And now, according to an internal memo, they’re ready to go.
If Delta is buying new Boeing aircraft, it necessarily means they’ve gotten a nearly unprecedented deal on the planes. With Boeing losing numerous orders as a result of delays and groundings, compounded by Russian sanctions and China’s state-controlled carriers going with Airbus narrowbodies, they’re desperate to put better numbers up on the board.
Meanwhile adding these planes to their order book will likely mean making cancellation of the program even less likely and far more costly, so Boeing’s threats to legislators and regulators – already reminiscent of Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles – ring even more hollow.
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 »
