Originally Posted by
Jaimito Cartero
DL miles are far from worthless. For me, they are the hardest of major US programs to redeem at low levels. I mostly travel international, and for biz tickets. I can use UA or AA miles with ease. DL is considerably harder for me.
That's a reasonable assessment. They're useable and far from worthless, but typically more difficult to employ for a combination of reasons:
1) inferior domestic availability
2) Poor booking experience on website and often via phone
3) Poor visibility into actual availability - dl's search is a joke and many partners are not conveniently searchable even elsewhere, and those that are you need to pogo back and forth between multiple sources, then convince a phone agent to book the space
Actual availability across oceans is the least of our concerns.
Originally Posted by
javabytes
Welcome to the Internet, everything is layered in a thick coat of drama.
Underneath that are repeated annual studies showing Delta placing last in award availability, as well as other studies showing satisfaction levels so low that only Congress might be able to match.
So while there is drama and exaggeration and hyperbole, the question is whether UA miles are better than Delta miles, and at the overall level, the answer is still pretty clear. Certainly DL miles may work better for someone who wants to travel to a destination not served by *A. That is why much larger surveys are compiled. The answer to this question for a particular person might be more nuanced, but on the whole, DL has abysmal availability compared to its competitors, and a satisfaction rating to match.
The most common annual study referred to is the Ideaworks one. If you have another in mind, please let me know. Those annual studies also put WN first. Maybe it's time to jump ship over there for their awesome availability? Perhaps even more relevant, they consistently rank US air down right next to delta, despite US air having, save a handful of exceptions, the same availability as UA. It's a ranking of websites, not of award availability. On top of that, 7 of the top 10 ranked carriers were evaluated by different criteria from the others (shorthaul only vs 50/50 long/short), and only coach availability in 20 markets different for each airline was considered. The study is a complete joke!
The more recent survey run through flyertalk
http://www.frequentbusinesstraveler....ve-the-rest/2/
interestingly put the big airlines ranked near the top of the Ideaworks study (lufthansa group, singapore) right down at the bottom near Delta in terms of "not satisfied" percent. AS, on the other hand, has nearly 85 percent satisfaction, despite very restrictive requirements on award construction making their miles very difficult to use for international travel if you don't originate in a small handful of cities.
Is it any wonder that a survey sourced from flyertalk, where people present a claim that DL is meaningfully worse than UA for redemption 99% of the time, despite this being clearly false, is going to do anything other than savage delta in a survey (and the criticism is well deserved, but is very likely more about IT and alliance integration than actual availability, given the preponderance of people complaining about there being no space in situations where that space actually exists)
If you want overall satisfaction ratings, I'm pretty sure UA is taking it in the shorts recently, and below Delta on studies focused in that area.
http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?opt...=14&Itemid=262
http://www.airlinequalityrating.com/reports/2012aqr.pdf