I'm sure there will be a fairly major change coming, now that they've woken up to how bad it is. But I've just lost my confidence in leadership at Delta from the top down here: the fact that they didn't realize this would be a debacle is an indictment of their entire leadership team. Because of this I've also drawn my attention to so many other areas where Delta is getting worse, like reports of customer service reps getting next to no training (correlated with many reports of clueless CSR experiences), large increase in operational snafus, ongoing problems with their IT, etc. It's clear who has the upper hand there: they've lost the thread of what made Delta what it was: an airline that traded on a higher quality experience in exchange for loyalty and somewhat higher average prices.

But they've been dismantling this, drip by drip, for years, and this SkyMiles snafu is just the latest evidence the entire mentality of the executive team has been this way for quite a while. It just took Ed until now to attempt to completely dismantle the last vestiges of what used to make Delta a better choice.

Whether they really make changes or not, this debacle reveals their way of thinking. They have been aiming to make Delta more and more like United and American.

Meanwhile, new CEO at American has stepped in; Isom's a longtime AA exec, but he has an engineering background, not an MBA like Parker was. And we have seen some major shifts in direction at AA: announcements of major renovations to lounges, all new upscale lounges, upgrades to food at all lounges, improvements in operations that he talks about constantly, better on time performance, and so on. It's still not as good as Delta but it's clear that Isom decided to make American more like Delta used to be, whereas Delta is rushing to become more like American used to be.

Hence: I'm giving AA a try. So far: it definitely feels like a step down, but I will ride this out for at least a year, and see what Delta does not just with this "rollback" but across the airline. Do they wake up and rediscover what made them tops in the first place, or are they just going to paper over a multi-year downward trajectory? Only after this year with AA will I evaluate Delta again.