Originally Posted by MSPeconomist

We had a serviceable airline that treated us elites very well and took good care of us in IROPs. Award tickets were easy to book, as were upgrades from reasonable fares TATL and TPAC. The joint venture with KLM worked well and gave us efficient connections through AMS to almost anywhere. The NRT hub also worked well for access to Asia.

Now we have lots of inferior planes with small bins and fewer FC seats, DL IT, DL award booking and inventory disaasters, fewer especially hot meals, a horribly redone lounge, sometimes incompetent DM line agents, but hey, the planes have blue leather seats and female FAs tend to wear more makeup. It's smoke and mirrors over substance and I'm still not happy about the merger. Oh yeah, and I don't want to connect through ATL or JFK to go everywhere either.