Originally Posted by
yngdiego
But the problem is that CLEARELY DL does NOT want to fix the problem. It's been ongoing for YEARS, and I think has gotten worse. This is not launching the space shuttle; it's tweaking the back-end systems. If they really wanted it working, a team of programmers could be put on the problem I bet most issues worked out in a couple of months or less.
You are correct that a complete fix simply means investing enough in programming to get it done. You are also correct that the problems have been around for years (though some have been fixed, while new ones have arisen as a result of program changes). No one questions those two things, and no one would argue that it would be ideal to have the calendar work perfectly, and years ago. The question is: for the degree of problems that exist, how much does it make sense to spend fixing them, and when?
Domestic redemptions - which I suspect represent the vast majority - work quite well. Buggy, yes, and certainly not as good as AA's calendar, but good enough to suit most purposes. I can speak from experience - I've redeemed dozens of domestic award tickets at the low/saver level for a variety of routes and time frames and seat classes over the past few years - with very few frustrations. International and complex routings do not appear to have the same track record, and this is certainly a legit complaint. So, to fix the minor domestic and presumably major international bugs, how much money should be spent, and when? I hire and manage programmers for similar (though not airline-related) projects in the course of running my company. Trust me - it isn't cheap nor quick. Delta could be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, and a team of people working for months. That doesn't mean they shouldn't do it - it just means that they must weigh carefully how bad the problems are versus what it will cost to fix them. Timing is a serious issue too. My guess is that they were ready to progress in fixing many of the problems a couple years ago, but then the merger news came around. It certainly doesn't make sense to spend massive sums of money to fix something that you know will be radically changed over the coming couple of years and will likely negate all the work (or at least make it inefficient). My hope is, and what I think would be logical for Delta, would be to invest heavily as soon as the systems are fully merged... maybe sometime this spring... to get it running as "best in class" along with many of their other offerings.