Originally Posted by
sfozrhfco
Combined in large part with internal policies which encourage rebooking on DL or giving refunds rather than booking on another carrier. No carrier is 100% immune from the unexpected happening and it is generally better for the customers to have more options to fix problems than less.
Exactly. From my experience, having flown about equal DL, AA and UA over the last 1~2 years, DL has - by far - the worst reliability and on-time track record. Now, mind you, that is just my own personal experience based on my travel patterns.
While other airlines will readily rebook you on others, DL will always find some reason to block it and would rather delay you 24 or even 48 hours to fly on DL, vs. allow you to go on even another SkyTeam airline flight. Other airlines, in the meanwhile, will readily rebook you on another airline, in or out of their alliance, even if you're a nobody; but at DL, even a DM will get the short end of the stick.
So, these figures to me just show how very cheap DL is and how DL treats its pax so much worse in case of irrops than other airlines do: while AA will readily rebook its pax on DL when things go wrong, when things go wrong at DL (and it so happens a lot), DL will fight tooth and nails and resist rebooking pax on any other airline, and thus of course the proportions will be like this. But, that just shows how very cheap DL is and how badly DL treats its pax, that's all - combining these supposed "stats" with my own experience across DL, AA and UA and observations.