Originally Posted by
rylan
I'm certainly not advocating nor so I expect DL to be running anywhere near as full schedule. But as others have said and we are experiencing, if they cut flights to the point where the most things left are sold out 4-6 weeks from now then that would suggest they've cut too many and not left options for pax to rebook.
I'm not looking to travel to MCO, just referred to it since that was a topic of discussion.
Sure if a pile of people end up canceling and free up seats then it may work out, but this interim period is just a mess.
And I pulled up the MCO flights to show it was simply not true that everything is sold out, because that was what someone was claiming was a problem. But it's not. Not in the first week of June. Just checked mid and late June and also, most days at least 2 flights have 9+ seats left in Y. Six weeks from now, they are back up to 6 flights a day on ATL-MCO, and there are plenty of seats. (ATL-SLC also has plenty of seats 6 weeks out).
I know folks love to armchair route plan, but there are people who analyze data and run models over these decisions. That someone on here cant find flights s/he likes is not evidence that Delta cut too much. Cutting even a single frequency could screw up people's travel. That another airline has an option (as of today) that works better isnt proof of anything. (Not every airline makes its cuts for the summer at the same time.)
There are hard decisions for the airline industry to make. Not only is there a cost to running extra unnecessary planes, but every extra plane they fly puts employees at risk. Discretionary travel is not recommended, and data shows most Americans aren't planning to take that travel this summer. For every route that you find oversold one day, there will likely be two others that go out close to empty. Outside the U.S., many airlines remain completely shut down, or are operating even more skeletal service.
And to be clear, I've had all my summer travel plans on Delta screwed up by schedule reductions. One became impossible with the current schedule, and I will likely cancel another because the new schedule makes the trip too complicated. But I'm not ranting at Delta.