Originally Posted by
PHXflier
Weather affected the airlines fairly evenly this winter. DL has ATL and MSP, but UA has ORD, IAH and East Coast stations, and AA has DFW, CLT and ORD. Over and above IT issues affecting scheduling, it looks like DL also has a bit of a crew (particularly pilot) shortage. Many of the cancelled DL flights from hubs cite "operational" reasons, and there are spare planes there that they can use in case of a mechanical, so crew issues are most likely to blame for all those non-weather cancellations. I think DL needs to use some of its profits to hire who they are short of and return to becoming a reliable airline again.
Another consideration is that while it's now been over 5 years, Delta lost a lot of experienced operational talent during the pandemic. They can hire all they want, but when the people in key operational or management roles have limited experience in aviation and dealing with the nature of the industry (just look at the two major crises that have sprung up this month alone), it's going to be challenging. To your point, this also affected other airlines, so not sure what is going on that makes DL stand out more. For its part, I think UA has made modest gains in some areas while DL has slipped.