Have flown DL almost exclusively over the past 4 years, meaning I’ve done a handful of round trips to/from HND in D1.

Prior to COVID, I flew both UA Polaris and AA long-haul J many times, enough to get a sense of both the hard and soft product offerings on these carriers. And I have to say, unless AA and UA have both permanently degraded their business class offerings post-COVID, I don’t see how D1 consistently beats them out in any category. There are also some consistent areas I find lacking in D1:

- Old equipment. The D1 suites will be competitive until the competition gets doors, but they’re OLD. The IFE monitor on my last flight had a messed up touch screen that caused my movies to constantly pause. And that’s not even mentioning the non-suite seats marketed as D1…

- Food volume and presentation are like Domestic First more often than not: salad and main all served at once, no bread basket or even warm bread, no linen on the plastic food tray. In fact, my last couple of D1 flights, the only real differences between the meal service and a domestic F meal were the warm nuts at the beginning, and the dessert being served separately at the end. They’ve even gotten rid of the navy blue doily thing for the warm nuts recently.

- Spotty service: Not always greeted by name, drink refills only offered incidental to moving the meal service forward, generally no “above and beyond” from D1 FAs

Is my read on D1 in line with others’ recent experiences? How do they compare today with UA and AA? I find it hard to believe that the product I describe above can continue to command a 20-70% premium over its direct competitors in the US. And I wonder how much further Delta’s admittedly stellar branding will take it.