ethernal

People don't understand that things like jetstream and weather en-route are uncontrollable variables that must be accounted for. So when they are flying a transcon and arrive an hour early because the jetstream happened to be favorable, they assume that Delta (or any other airline) just crazy pads a schedule to avoid delays.

Which is partially true, but for the most part padding covers uncontrollable variables that tend to fall under a predictable normal or gamma distribution rather than a catch-all for for operational malaise. This is true for all airlines.

All airlines pad - I don't think Delta does it particularly more or less than others.

Delta has great operations - it is the best in the industry. That said, only a portion of its stats advantage is from that. A significant portion (likely a majority) of Delta's performance advantage over its peers has to do with the airports it flies out of. SLC, MSP, DTW, and to a lesser extent ATL are all low-congestion airports. LAX may be somewhat congested but is a good weather airport. SEA has gate issues but usually plenty of runway capacity and - occasional fog issues aside - decent WX.

Compare this to United as an example... they fly out of.. SFO (significant congestion, frequent fog), EWR (significant congestion), ORD (significant congestion). The only low-congestion hubs they have are IAH and DEN. IAD is somewhat in the middle (generally not directly runway constrained, but often ATC constrained due to spillover from the crowded NE corridor).


The only truly difficult hub that Delta flies out of is JFK/LGA.

Again, DL has great ops. Better than UA/AA for sure. Especially when it comes to controllable factors (significantly fewer MX delays and cancellations) and service recovery. But a lot of it has more to do with hub locations (which has its pros/cons.. United can fill a premium-heavy international config because they fly out of more Tier 1 cities - Delta can't, hence their smaller J cabins).