GBadger

Statistics are a funny thing. You are correct in saying that 5% of a population (or whatever relatively small number you wish to use) does not necessarily constitute a significant portion... However, if 80% of that 5% are generally unhappy and threatening to leave (and the 5% you're sampling happen to be some of your MOST frequent flyers), you'd better make sure that this ratio is not echoed throughout the rest of the population. I don't see DL doing that. I generally see them taking a "everything is fine" approach, and going about business as usual with the assumption that the small buzz they hear on Flyertalk is just an annoying sound. Yes, in this case a large fraction of that buzz may be coming from former NW elites... I just can't imagine that DL would have no interest in winning them over.

RobertS975

The fact is this... every company, whatever its business, needs to be proactive on internet BBs that discuss its products and operations. When an internet post can be read by hundreds of thousands of people, and lives on the internet forever (unless the moderators are guilty of premature evacuation ) the company (DL) needs to have a cadre of official spokespeople on a board such as this!

WBurcham

Take at look @ the CIO who came over from NW if you want a head to roll...

but wait, how could she have chosen such a terrible system? Oh, that's right, it was more robust & scalable for the enterprise needs.

FlyingHigh20

I think it's fairly inaccurate and very presumptious to assume she choose to keep Deltamatic. Nor do I think neither you, (nor I) have any idea on whether or not the system is robust and scalable for the needs of the business versus PARS.

What I think most people can agree on though, is that it has SIGNIFICANT limitations which create customer service issues. That, in itself, is a great concern.

WBurcham

No, it's not. That is what I was told (along w/a group of FTers) by Josh Weiss (former director of DL.com) & Jeff Robertson.

mersk862

Indeed.

Deltamatic might be a step back from PARS for frontline agents. Deltamatic however ties right into the Delta Nervous System, which is the entire IT component at Delta. If you think things are bad with Deltamatic right now, then I can tell you it would be a lot worse with PARS.

Delta had two choices really:
(a) Go with PARS for reservations. This would not have played well with the DNS and would require a lot of time and money to tie it into the DNS. It would likely make the US Airways/America West integration of SABRE into SHARES look tame by comparison.
(b) Dump PARS, go with Deltamatic. Yes, you lose some of the nice functionality that PARS had over Deltamatic. And yes, if you're strictly comparing res system to res system, PARS is superior. In the context of a much larger picture though, Deltamatic was better off.

As it stands, Delta is looking at replacing its entire res system within the next decade. Either way you slice it, PARS/Deltamatic were very old legacy systems dating back to my parents' childhood. There's finally been some traction on getting a new airline res system going this decade. Delta is looking at moving to that - and if you're the BoD looking at spending a ton of money to move to said system - is it better to short-term keep the inferior system, or spend a ton of money (and create even more headaches) by moving to PARS, only to dump that within the next 10 years?

DiverDave

Yeah, now they are really trembling in fear.

David

SDF_Traveler

I personally don't care what system they chose to use or where the CIO came from -- the fact is delta.com is bug ridden and can be a major headache.

DL is also the dominant legacy at SDF - most of the time, they are the best choice but lately I have had to book on other carriers because delta.com problems including what I consider to be misleading pricing and pricing errors (not in consumer favor).

The last award ticket I booked online was a real adventure - I went against the calendar and initial mileage levels listed; suddenly it "re-calculates" mileage required to that of a low Y / C ticket -- in the end the ticket was issued messed up and I had to be persistent at the airport to get what I paid for (in miles). I don't like to be that persistent "pain in the thorn" to the gate agents either (most of whom are great employees), but I do thank the gate agents yesterday who managed to correct a DL IT wrong at the absolute last minute (i.e. I was already seated in the far rear of acft when GA reissued BP and provided it to FA for me).

jw3putt

Since AMEX is a major source of non BIS miles, perhaps voting by cancelling cards and letting AMEX know the reason is also an option?

WBurcham

Again, they understand and are working to fix. It's been getting better but we cannot expect NWA.com overnight. Please look @ the post by mersk862 to get a better, more technical, insight into the issue...

mersk862

The folks in Atlanta know very well that the website needs a ton of work. That's why it's on the list of things to get fixed by end of year - by 1/1/11, there should be an entirely new delta.com that doesn't look like what you see today.

That being said, when it comes to an IT integration of this size, priorities need to be placed on where money goes and what gets done first. Delta realizes for reservations that PARS is a better system than Deltamatic - that's why Delta wanted to go that route until they realized that the costs to bring PARS up into the DNS (and the ensuing headaches) would create a more negative customer experience than staying with Deltamatic. It essentially was Delta picking their own poison - they knew that neither situation was necessarily good - it was a decision of what was least bad at the end of the day.

Now that they've gotten most of the major IT things behind now (res integration, web integration, SM integration, employee systems that we customers don't necessarily see/deal with), they can focus on stuff like building a brand new website from scratch to launch later this year. Getting the essential things that wouldn't allow the airline to run it's day-to-day operation done before doing something that could (briefly) wait would most likely not have been the right move at the end of the day.

socrates

Exactly....Theresa is an awesome CIO...but she's not Superman (err woman)...giver her time, we are seeing progress...as everyone agrees DL's IT was a mess (there's a reason DL's CIO is gone) wrong or right this is what she has to fix

itsaboutthejourney

^ From the rumors I've heard, even she was shocked at the poor state of pre-merger DL's IT once they started digging down into the system integration.

My ire is directed at Anderson & the beancounters that pushed to get rid of NW & nwa.com before Ms. Wise and her team could get delta.dumb up to speed.

hazelrah

+1 Oh hoh- woe be unto the Delta customer that experieces Delta irrops. It is beyond bad.

Thing is, I want to like Delta, but there is so little effort expended on the customer facing systems that it is hard to do so.

hazelrah

No, that was her inheritance, and being a smart woman I'm sure the woeful state of Delta IT upon her inheritance is documented.