pbarnette

AA was mediocre to poor, even before the merger. US, for all their faults, has been quite good for the past few years. Operational performance is definitely one area where US has a lot to teach the AA side of the house.

MSPeconomist

Personally, if I were a major oneworld person, I would find the concept of US teaching AA to be rather frightening.

fly18725

The bolded statement is unsupported and your own (biased) supposition.

While Delta's announcement gives it some good press and a potential tool to gain more corporate clients, I don't think anyone is in a position to say AA can complete a smooth integration and boost operational performance. Of course, gratuitous attacks on United are a popular past time.

luckypierre

DL has a vulnerable target. I wondered what specifics would follow Anderson's public remarks about seeing "huge share and revenue shifts" from operational reliability.

GRALISTAIR

Smart move by DL IMO

kop84

By consistently blaming anything but UA's lack of focus on running a good operation Smisek has opened UA up to such gratuitous attacks.

pbarnette

From an operational standpoint, it is simply not disputable that US was knocking it out of the park the last few years before the merger. I know that doesn't fit with the cliches about US, but it is the truth.

spin88

I think that there is wide understanding that AA/US will have a hard time re opperations until they get more integrated, and as such people are expecting it. AA/US has also been going out of its way to be proactive, which takes some of the sting out of it.

This said, I understand that AA/US is in the middle of a series of changes to try to improve OT performance and that Parker and Co are not happy, and that the July numbers for them will look much more competitive than did June.

The main difference is that I seriously doubt that Parker will accept a goal of sub-80% OT like UA has, nor will he believe that getting over 80% has "diminishing returns."

Parker will also have integrated work groups shortly, and with scheduling adjustments should be able to put AA/US well over 80%, I doubt that Jeff could even if he were willing to spend $$ (and he is not) to try to get to over 80%.

kop84

I think that getting about 80% starts moving beyond MX delays but more into territory that doesn't fall under WX but is still beyond carrier control like being 45th in line for departure at JFK, or circling for 30 min at ORD waiting for landing clearance.

I know carriers don't have to offer as many flights at peak times, but they are peak times for a reason that is when passengers want to be flying. So that is avoidable yet unavoidable at the same time. Especially in the summer when everyone's schedule ramps up.

Which is partly why HA/AS are always leaders in on-time performance...limited exposure to busy airspace.

DL2SXM

Delta's timing couldn't be better. Right in the middle of another summer UA meltdown and right in the middle of the AA/US merger. The folks down in Atlanta aren't stupid.

GUWonder

Sales gimmick, but it does make the point that DL's operationally far from being the worst of the US airline lot.

avidflyer

I agree. I have also found the front line to be very good. The only other airline (Other than DL) where I am guaranteed to get a PDB is US.

3Cforme

Knocking it out of the park? Eh.

Beating AA and American Eagle by a bunch in on-time performance? Handily.

BearX220

Clear signals that UA has settled into its current quality levels:

** Smisek's remark that striving for better than 80% OT yields diminishing returns.

** Smisek's decision to spend $3B on a stock buyback instead of investing in system upgrades.

** OT and completion rates that are worse than six months ago, when UA issued external communications boilerplate saying it understood the importance of reliability.

** Repeat paralyzing IT meltdowns with no explanation and no visible campaign to lower odds of recurrence.

** Dead silence from corporate in the face of disasters like Goose Bay or coverage from Reuters, WSJ, etc. portraying UA as degenerating.

Come on. This is United's new normal. That's not a "gratuitous attack." Them's the facts.

sethb

I wonder if UA and AA will just lengthen their schedules to get more "on-time" arrivals. It worked for DL.