>>>>>>That only works if you have not started travel. For example, if you had gone on your 1st leg of the trip, and that leg made you silver, you CANNOT and DL res. agents CANNOT delete/re-enter your FF#.

I did have success having the number re-entered on December 23rd after going from Gold to Plat on the outbound leg to Europe. I don't know if it made a difference that it was originally a NW record, but a terse, grumpy agent was able to make the change, and it the status change worked fine for the return.

One has to wonder. I (personally) think that the head of IT must be incompetent. There really is simply no excuse for this.

Every time I changed status, (to FO, to GM and to PM) I've had this problem. Everytime DL fails to do anything about it. I opted for DL as the people in the cabins and gates are great. I would have gone with CO except that they went *A and I dont' like UA as an alt (and I won't fly US if I can avoid it). I chose DL as they have mainline into most cities I fly to. But COs RJs are starting to look good if this sort of nonsense continues.

Dave

You do realize that the head of IT at DL was the head of IT at NW don't you? There was a big article about her here in the AJC a while back. That's been true since just right after the merger.

And the IT behind the SkyMiles program is entirely NW's. The two SkyClub agents I needed to help me do something hated it.

I never had a problem with this as long as my status had already been changed on the weekend tape run. That's supposed to be 24 hours now though.

I think that's a bit premature. We have been told the loyalty system is the NW WP system. It's just as possible that the issue is in the Reservation system. Which we all know is a fairly old legacy system.

Let's put this into perspective. You've taken the VP of the NW IT systems, and the majority of go forward systems are DL. That's not going to magically make things work better.

But most people on FT want/expect/demand magic.

No. I just want it to work. I'm getting real tired of it being a different issue everyday. I find that I can seldom go on the site without some issue. Seat maps that will not let me select a seat, flights that will not pull up to book, etc.

On each on my last three trips the kiosk no longer finds my record after the first flight, and sometimes take 10 minutes or longer for an agent to fix it. Sometimes after it is "fixed" the reader at the gate kicks it out, etc.

It should have never be allowed to have gotten to this point. Somebody, somewhere needs their walking papers handed to them as it is very apparent there has been a lack of testing before being tried out on us.

It worked fine before the merger and I simply can not remember ever having any issues. It is daily now. So in short I don't really want to hear about whether it is a redtail issue or any other excuse. The employees are up to their eye balls with it as well and are very frustrated.

Either fix it or get some one who can..........

I totally agree with this. Either IT people and or management of IT is simply incompetent and need to be shown the door. This is not the 1980s with the advent of computers.

Dave

Ahh, but that's the problem. DL's Board of Directors choose to do things on the "Cheap". The original plan was to use the NW systems which had more features and were fairly modern. Some bean counter figured out the training and hardware expenses. Instead they decided to go with a mixture of legacy DL systems for Reservations, Web and Operations, and NW loyalty management system.

That is an incredibly short sighted direction that can only a group of technology illiterates could make. It's bad enough that you're merging data from two major airlines. Now you're going to play mix-n-match with your core systems that are tightly interconnected. The outcome is there's no way to calculate the amount of work it will take to get things running right. There will be cost overruns, irritated customers, lost revenue from people who can't buy the tickets they need and a final product that will likely be worse than what you began with.

In the end I doubt they actually saved any money over just using the NW systems. The savings they anticipated will likely be eaten up by problems they created for themselves.

But you see, it doesn't really matter for the guys at the top. Most of DL's largest customers are corporate. Almost every large corporation has a TA handle their booking as a cost control measure. Those are GDS tickets, no ones going out to DL.com to purchase.

Delta
 

I believe the Delta VPS got the message -

Delta Corp:" Priority One - bring cost to the bare minimum, raise revenue - all other priorities rescinded"

Delta VPs - "but what about the Frequent Flyer program, customer satisfaction, IT, small markets"?

Delta Corp" "repeat, all other priorities rescinded"

This is true. It's going to cost them a lot more money to duct-tape the systems together than it would have to ditch the DL system and spend to get everything going on the superior NW system.

But the bean counters can't take all the blame. This was a failure on the part of the techs to properly advice management on the migration/integration costs. The ball was probably dropped due to DL tech staff feeling threatened by the NW tech org. This cluster**** does indeed secure their employment for a long time to come.

Ummm... non-sequitor much?

Like so many people go to Manila that it can bankrupt the world's largest airline.

Watch with the hyperboles...

Love the Alien reference there, Ash ;)

We are living in a transition period at the moment. They are not done yet.

Prior to the merger, a DL pax did not experience the issues that we all "enjoy" right now. However ugly Deltamatic may or may not be, pre-merger any issues with it were mostly hidden from the customer.

Taking the "cheap" road through this process may well have been the only realistic choice they had. They aren't exactly swimming in cash right now. Having done large system integrations for a number of customers I would love nothing better than a blank check to execute but it never happens. Accepting some inconvenience in the name of saving money is a decision that many companies face when making changes to core platforms.

Any business that has a large number of customers reservations details in one system and a large number of customer reservations details in another system will experience issues until everything can exist in one platform. That will happen soon, we are experiencing an interim step in the overall process that could not begin until the SOC was achieved - last week.

If they had chosen PARS going forward, we would be exactly where we are right now because they are two core platforms that were never designed to integrate with one another. Until we have one platform there will be issues. Spend a fortune and take a long time to create the middleware to connect the two knowing it will be thrown away when done or try to get through the transition ASAP accepting some pain in the name of saving money and speeding up the overall process? It appears the former NW CIO endorsed the latter.

Be patient, they will get there and then will be in a position to focus on customer enhancements and the best of what was learned from the previous entities.

Nice try.

TOKYO, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Delta Air Lines (DAL.N), the world's biggest carrier, is in talks to invest in struggling Japan Airlines Corp (JAL) (9205.T) and become its top shareholder, Japanese media said on Friday.

Public broadcaster NHK and Kyodo news said Delta was in talks to invest several tens of billions of yen (several hundred million dollars) in JAL, Asia's largest airline by revenue, as part of a business alliance.

DL's management can, and will, do whatever they want. Invest in Customer Relationship Management systems, or take a page out of GM's book (Saab anyone?) and add more baubles to their portfolio.

NW legacy customers are only so much collateral damage during this ill-planned and inadequately resourced joining of two very disparate IT systems. It would have cost more money to use the better of the two, so Deltamatic rules. (In punch cards we trust)

Those who were/are DL customers are tired of all the whining of former NW flyers and wonder what all the fuss is about. Functional and predictable IT (see: Award Calendar) has apparently never been part of the DL experience.

Once DL has purged its ranks of those pesky NW customers and their incessant demands for functional IT and less mendacious corporate communications (see: Best in Class) it will no doubt be a swell airline.

Wrong. Pre-merger I used to be able to find low awards all the time.

The problems with awards at the moment is the ridiculous award levels, particularly for F seats. This has been done on purpose, not by IT as a mistake but by DL management to discourage people from occupying the premium seats they desire to sell at high margin. However if you are willing to part with 400k SM for a single F seat, well then go ahead.

Don't blame IT for implementing bad/unpopular policy from DL management.