I have spent 10 yrs at NW Plat and previously only 2 years DL Gold (prior to NW entering sky team). In those 2 years I never received one upgrade, never received one extra service, and spent way too much time wrestling with a terrible web page.

Since NW joined the skyteam, I have focused on WP. DL is the only SkyTeam partner that has still never upgraded me, I have never received anything for Elite+ from DL, and I still have to wrestle with a dreadful website.

Though the seats in F are nicer on DL, and the food is better, the service is less consistent than NW. I have bought F tickets on DL.

Finally, two nightmares stick out: SLC and ATL. While one poster compared them to a trailer park, to me there are more like SW cattle calls. I have never had an easy, enjoyable, or tolerable time transferring in either hub.

Unfortunately, NW does not cover Latin America. That leaves me with DL and CO. I pay for my own tickets so price matters and sometimes that puts me on DL. (Though I will pay 15% more for CO to avoid ATL). CO GA and FA can cop a NY attitude (legendarily fostered by the former CEO) a bit too frequently but their food and seat quality make up for it usually.

I can only remain optomistic that DL is buying NW not for their profitability but instead for their reliability as an airline. And this is what I really like about NW: they do not have the best seats, best food, happiest workers, or newest planes; but they offer a consistent, honest, reliable, safe product. I know exactly what I am going to get on 99% of my flights. Perhaps DL can learn a thing or two from the NW folks.

I'll end with a shout out for the folks in Chisolm. The elite line has solved more problems for me on NW and other airlines than any other bunch of CSRs in the entire industry. They are great. For them alone I would stick with NW.