Tag Archives for delta air lines.
There was a lot of excitement recently over the ability to buy Alaska Airlines gift cards at a 10% discount via Costco ($500 gift card for $450). Delta Air Lines is offering a 10% bonus but there’s something unique about the bonus. It isn’t an electronic gift card. Instead it’s “a limited-edition $50 Delta Gift Card made from a retired DC-9 aircraft“
One way business class between the US and Europe on Air France and KLM has gone from 75,000 to 95,000 miles. Partner one way awards to North Asia are up to 102,500 miles. And Virgin Atlantic business class one ways booked within 3 weeks of departure can run as high as 195,000 miles. That’s insane.
A black woman wearing a hat deemed offensive was kicked off a Delta flight. Video of the incident is circulating widely in social media. The woman’s hat has ‘the F-word’ on it to highlight the need for police reform.
Apparently a flight attendant asked the woman to remove her hat and she wouldn’t. And that’s when the captain got involved. He’s objecting to the hat she’s wearing, but the bigger problem seems to me that he isn’t wearing a mask.
Monday night’s Delta Air Lines flight DL1997 from Miami to Atlanta was delayed for several hours when a passenger refusing to wear a mask hit a flight attendant after being asked to deplane the aircraft.
Video of the incident shows two passengers arguing with a flight attendant before the maskless man was removed by police.
Delta, like many other airlines, wants the best customers of competitor airlines. And to make it easier to switch, they offer temporary elite status (a status match) and an expedited path to keep that status (a status challenge).
Right now they want the best customers of competitor airlines a lot more than usual and are doing something creative about it.
Alison Sider of the Wall Street Journal asked whether Delta supports a CARES Act extension (airline payroll support), since Delta CEO Ed Bastian hasn’t been nearly as public on the issue as others like American’s Doug Parker.
Bastian was in a tough spot.
Delta is losing less money, making customers happy, and sees the near-term dominated by leisure travel that doesn’t touch the coasts. Business travel has tripled, but it’s off of a low base. All the forecast good news means they foresee when they’ll stop blocking middle seats.
The brightest spot is their American Express credit card deal – they are beginning to acquire customers again, excited by the performance of the current limited-time offer.
Delta raised $9 billion, backed by its SkyMiles program. They broke SkyMiles into three new separate Cayman Islands companies: SkyMiles Holdings, SkyMiles IP, and SkyMiles IP Finance.
As part of the deal they had to agree not to start a competing frequent flyer program, and they had to agree to limits on devaluing the program.
Delta is out with changes to its SkyMiles program that are positives for members. They’re building on elimination of domestic change fees by exempting award changes and redeposits as well, excluding Basic Economy fares, and extending airline club memberships and credit card companion tickets and travel credits.
Delta and United are raising money in private markets against their loyalty programs. American Airlines is using its AAdvantage program to securitize a subsidized government CARES Act loan. These moves underscore that the frequent flyer programs remain one of the most attractive assets held by airlines, even during the pandemic.
Raising money on the programs though means disclosing much more information than they’re using to offering.
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 »
