As someone who as already voted with my dollars and moved my business elsewhere, I will comment with a bent toward things that might eventually bring me back.
Originally Posted by
RealDLInsider
In addition to greater mileage utility, its even more important that we provide greater transparency into when and where award seats are available. Over the last several years, many airlines have added multiple partners which provide additional access to award seats, but calls to our reservations staff and technology (search tools) to find these award seats are inadequate and result in very lengthy talk times. One of our goals is to provide greater transparency and awareness of where award seats are and provide to each customer not just transparency, but the ability to pick and choose when they want to fly and at various mileage rates. This is yet one more thing Delta will commit to during 2008.
1. Bringing back the 331 day availability factor would do a lot for me and lot of others. Some of us HAVE to plan far ahead for vacations, family reunions, etc. The end of 331 was a big deal.
2. Fix the delta.com award calendar! I won't go into all the well documented glitches that routinely occur, but will just say that they raise the level of frustration considerably. The cliche "insult to injury" comes to mind.
3. You don't specifically mention bringing back SkyChoice, but it is a make or break issue for a number of your elites. I think DL greatly underestimated the value of SkyChoice as a customer retention factor.
Consolidation issues:
As far as mileage valuations in potential merger, a 1:1 would work in nearly all cases, as long as a merger is not used as cover for yet another devaluation. DL will have a bigger worry convincing your die-hard loyalists that their level of personnel interface satisfaction will not plummet in a merged company. I have NOT personally found this to be as big a loss in my change of airlines as I had thought, though. Having a Visa/MC credit card option would be good since Amex is not accepted in quite a few places.
One last thing. If one of your stated goals is transparency, make the criteria for the highest elite level absolutely clear and concrete. I personally would never make it to that level, but it does not set well with a lot of high-tier customers when they don't know what they have to do to get to the top of the system. "Fly like crazy and charge your Amex like cracy, and we MIGHT elevate you," is almost insulting.
Thanks for eliciting input. You'll probably get a lot. Now we will see how DL acts on it.