The article says nothing about UA's ratio - just that total volume from UA to DL was higher than AA to DL.
The 5:1 is an acceptance rate. Remember, the other airline doesn't have to accept the rebook.
Someone on Gary Leff's blog is saying AA was refusing a fair amount of irrops accommodation from Delta passengers, and the ratio of asks was not so imbalanced.
Perhaps DL wanted some commitment to reciprocation that AA didn't want to play along with. Or it tried charging AA a higher rate than UA for being short sighted.
Either way IRROPS at LGA and JFK just lost a valuable backstop where the two of them had a lot of nonstop route overlap. Neither of them interlines with JetBlue.
BOS and DCA are also big losers now that I think about share there.
Delta can have a more reliable operation, but it's not even close to 100% - especially in delay prone NYC where it's fighting for share and you yourself have noted no one can run a reliable operation at LGA.
No customer wins with this non-agreement - short sighted by AA and DL.
Originally Posted by
spin88
The article says that UA's rate is WORSE, meaning higher than 5:1. Delta is also quoted (correctly I might add) as saying that they were effectively "backstoping" OALs crappy operations.
This is another example of how having good opperations is benificial (it allows DL to raise its rates) and how an airline with bad OPPs (United) can't really say no. So yes, its customer friendly, but if UA is offloading folks to DL at a higher then 5:1 ratio, they really had no option but to pay what DL is demanding, the other option was to make these folks sit for a day or two for a UA flight, or go the IDB route, both of which would have further hurt them.