Tag Archives for delta air lines.
In general Virgin Atlantic has some of the least valuable miles but their points are ubiquitous since they’re a transfer partner of Chase, Ameriacn Express, and Citibank. They do have real sweet spots. My favorite is using their miles for ANA first class round trip to Tokyo for just 120,000 miles.
Perhaps their most useful redemption was award travel on Delta. Not anymore. And without any notice, boom, during the pandemic.
Delta cancelled 67 flights on Christmas Eve day. They had already cancelled 123 flights on Christmas Day, or 10% of their schedule, by 6 a.m. on the East Coast. In contrast American Airlines had cancelled only one flight.
This follows an operational meltdown over Thanksgiving.
Delta ran a $479 roundtrip business class fare from New York to São Paulo. It only lasted for a few hours. It was probably a mistake fare, but many people assumed it was intentional because of something very strange that happened next. American Airlines matched the $479 roundtrip business class fare.
About about 10:30 a.m. on Monday morning two passengers on Delta Air Flights flight 462 from New York LaGuardia to Atlanta opened an emergency exit door on the Airbus A321 after pushing back – and exited the aircraft down the slide with their large service dog.
Nine years ago Delta started requiring all changes or cancellations of award travel be made at least 72 hours prior to departure. If you had a last minute change of plans, you’d have to forfeit your ticket and buy a new one. If better award space opened up close to departure, you were out of luck.
Delta has finally dropped the 72 hour requirement to change or cancel an award.
Delta, which can go hundreds of days at a time without cancelling a flight, cancelled hundreds of flights in days over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Delta blames Covid-19, offering “We didn’t expect the effects of a sharp increase in capacity in the last part of the month to be compounded by rising number of positive COVID cases and quarantine requirements among pilots and other factors.”
A man posted a video to TikTok where he cooks a steak in a Delta lavatory. He puts a Sterno can in the toilet, lights it, and places an aluminum grilling sheet over the seat. Then he puts the raw steak on the sheet and pours white wine over it to marinate (perhaps it’s an old steak he’s trying to hide the spoiling flavor on, a good piece of meat should never require this!). He plates it and returns to his seat. There’s no question he should be banned from the airline, and probably charged with a crime if this really happened as-shown, for lighting a fire in the lavatory.
Delta Air Lines, which has developed a reputation for extreme reliability, has faced a Thanskgiving operational meltdown cancelling a more flights over the holiday weekend than they typically cancel in a year. So far on Thanksgiving day Delta has cancelled 259 flights, or 18% of its schedule. By comparison, American Airlines has cancelled 5 flights and United has cancelled 7.
What’s going on at Delta? Delta’s meltdown seems to be a combination of poor operational management, and failing to use the tools available to them which would incur costs.
By 9 a.m. this morning Delta Air Lines had cancelled over 80 flights today, on what’s expected to be the busiest travel day since March. There are even more cancellations tomorrow. So far FlightAware appears to be tracking over 420 Delta cancellations throughout the holiday weekend.
The same rules allowing Delta’s club lounge to serve alcohol despite the Michigan governor’s order closing bars should apply equally to restaurants in the airport for those who don’t have club membership and are willing to pay for a drink.
However it seems a lot easier for people to drink alone, as Michigan’s governor seems to prefer people in her state do, than make a trip out to the airport just for liquor. It would be fascinating to see Delta’s internal data over the next three weeks about whether alcohol consumption continues to track with passenger numbers, or whether it increases on a per-admittance basis in to the club.
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 »
