Tag Archives for delta air lines.
Delta has serious staff shortages. Telephone calls from their best customers are taking up to 41 hours to answer. Now it seems they can’t get anyone to clean their lounges, so they asked various work groups to volunteer as cleaners.
United Airlines has Saks Fifth Avenue bedding for Polaris, American has Casper bedding for its business product. Delta, though, is focus grouping what its bedding future should look like. And the images it’s using in surveys aren’t Westin anymore. They’re also surveying changes for sustainability.
Delta Air Lines has plenty of cash. They never furloughed any employees. Travel is recovering and they’re expecting to return to profitability this summer. They’re even making large bonus payments to management employees.
Against this backdrop, Hunter Keay from Wolfe Research asked Delta CEO Ed Bastian during the airline’s earnings call whether they would turn down ‘PSP3’ the third government airline bailout that will offer them about $3 billion in exchange for continuing to pay employees through September.
Mary Schlangenstein who covers airlines for Bloomberg asked CEO Ed Bastian during Delta’s earnings call about Southwest’s no-notice 6.5% devaluation of Rapid Rewards points yesterday and whether they’d considering doing something similar.
Bastian offered SkyMiles as a contrast to Southwest, “we’re not considering that, and we’re very excited about the value [of the SkyMiles program].” Wait, wut?
United and American have spoken out against measures that limit access to voting. American came out against a proposal in Texas they had not read. Delta is against Georgia’s law, after being for it, and after telling employees they helped craft its final form.
Now the CEOs of American Airlines and United have joined a forum of major corporate CEOs concerned about voting rights that was put together just a few days ago.
United Airlines sells the pre-mixed Knob Creek Old Fashioned by On The Rocks Cocktails ($12) but I think what’s striking here is the can.
The packaging feels low-end, and is reminiscent of when Spirit Airlines used to sell wine in a can.
Just last week Delta Air Lines said they would stop blocking middle seats May 1, but they’re filling up planes including middle seats early – temporarily this weekend – as the once most-reliable airline in the country tries to recover from another holiday operational meltdown.
Delta proactively cancelled 72 flights as of this writing on Sunday, compared to just 1 for United and 5 at American, before the flying day even started.
Delta is offering at least a 50% elite qualifying bonus on all travel for the rest of 2021, and a 75% bonus for premium cabin travel, under the banner of Medallion Accelerator. For the first time at Delta award travel will count towards earning elite status from April 1 through December 31, 2021 as well.
Delta Air Lines told employees they helped write Georgia’s new voting law. They dug in deeper defending their position that they ‘made the bill better’ and refused to criticize it.
Facing online and media controversy, and a supposed-consumer boycott, they’ve now reversed course. After first congratulating themselves on it, and then refusing to criticize it, CEO Ed Bastian now says it’s abhorrent.
Last Friday Delta Air Lines told employees they were part of crafting Georgia’s voting restrictions bill offering that their “state government affairs team..heavily engaged on this issue, holding meetings with state elected officials on both sides of the aisle in order to make sure the Delta voice was well represented and heard.”
CEO Ed Bastian refused to condemn the legislation, claiming they made it better, and at most was willing to acknowledge that “concerns remain.” Today the airline released a video to employees defending this position.
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 »
