Interesting

I'm not quite sure where to start, but have you ever looked rationally at this? If what you are saying is true, let's go with the 25% figure and do the numbers....

Your profile indicates DM, so let's assume 100 segments a year at $200 per segment. This means you are spending $50 extra per segment to fly DL, which comes out to $5,000/year. Assuming you earn 1.25k extra points per segment, you are earning 125k points/year. Assume you could get cheap domestic tickets, you are essentially paying $1,000/award ticket through your strategy. Delta is not doing anything which should make you alter your behavior to do business with Delta. Alter the assumptions on how much you would fly DL if you were not DM, and but a monetary cost on the other benefits, and it still seems like a waste of money.

I fly DL often because I live in ATL and like to fly direct, have choices on when I fly and often have to fly to smaller markets. Yes, it's nice to get upgrades, lounge access on international trips and bonus points, and I live on SDCs, but choosing an airline has more to do with price, schedule and getting safely from Point A to Point B.

If you are wasting your own money to fly DL, that's your problem. It's foolish, as you could get lots of perks with the $5k your throwing away. If you're wasting your company's money to fly DL, then shame on you. I work for a large company, but have always treated my travel budget as if I were spending my own money. I understand that the purpose of SM is to influence people like me to fly DL, and given all things equal, I do choose DL because of the SM program. But what I don't get is how someone can justify choosing DL when it doesn't make economic sense.

I don't know where you fly. But I generally find DL to be cheaper for most of my flights out of LAX. The weird part is that I am trying real hard not to fly DL and their lower prices is actually interfering severely with my plans (since the introduction of DM, I have been spending ~50% of my $ on DL). IAC, I cannot avoid choosing DL when they are 20-30% cheaper than UA, AA or CO.

In short, my boycott is such a failure that I should become DM this year, while trying real hard not to fly DL!!!

Agreed 100 percent... and I don't think that their product justifies paying 25 or 30 percent more... and that's why I probably won't make Diamond (or possibly even platinum) next year... Last year Delta's prices were very close to competitive (if not better than other airlines). My boyfriend is PM and we calculated that last year we probably spent $500 or $600 total between the two of us additional to fly on Delta. To us it was worth it. Getting on the plane early is important to us, (the upgrades didn't always happen, and service was for sure better than it seems to be now), but the price competitiveness was also a factor. This year so far, I've flown on Jet Blue, Spirit and have an upcoming TATL (and possibly more) on United. I'll still fly Delta when I can find a competitive price or even one which is 5 to 8 percent higher on Delta, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one who feels like I do based on other threads. The frustration is that for the past 10 or 15 years we have kept our loyalty to Delta. We both have over 600K skymiles left in our accounts are are approaching million milers. We can both ask for status match on UA or AA, but we keep hoping that Delta takes steps to live up to their claim "Best in Class". If enough people voice their discontent (including with their purse) and let Delta know why, some positive changes could come.

It used to be like that for us in Tampa, but this year it seems to be the total opposite. I know that we have a very high level of Medellins down here. Maybe it's more that UA and US and others are trying to get our business and Delta isn't competing... Maybe they figure that they have the market tied up down here...

You have made the mistaken assumption that Delta even knows I am here.

One World is much better for RTW trips in F.

Out of curiosity...what's the desired outcome here?

I think we may be kidding ourselves if we think these postcards are ever going to find their way to the c-suite. It might work, but I'm not an optimist.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...the grass is NOT greener on the other airlines. AA, UA and US all have major labor issues going on and the pax are getting caught in the middle.

AA still charges all but their uber-elites for upgrades.

CO's elites are unhappy that the UA elites are swarming the airline.

CO also stopped meals in coach (finally) which left folks with a bad taste.

When flying transatlantic, folks with an AA FF account cannot earn miles / elite qualifying miles OR redeem award tickets on BA which makes AA and IB your only options across the pond.

US all but spits in your face when you board their aircraft.

I get that folks are disgruntled with DL. I myself have has a rather difficult spell with DL lately but I really do think folks need to realign some of their expectations, The golden age of air travel is over. It died nearly a decade ago. DL is still NOT making money so I'm not sure where they are going to find the revenue to give everyone the perks being demanded.

Actually, I think the above post brings up some very good points and is completely valid. I think though, the OP's purpose is not to demand more perks, but to point out to DL in a unified way how their program is causing folks to leave to other pastures (greener or not, as you point out).

Where I think this can have the best effect is for us here at FT that send these post cards to focus on the few things that need to get fixed which caused us to flock to other airlines (i.e. where they are a lot stronger). I'll start:

1. Huge lack of availability in international J
2. Broken award calendar/website
3. Difficulty in using PMU's

Give me those things, and I'd have a lot better FFP that I think would be worth my loyalty.

JC, we should also start the seatback handouts again, get visibility from crew too. What do you think?

Model? In this economy? There's no way to differentiate loss from the economy versus the boneheaded FFP changes.

Why do you care what other people do? Why are you trying to discourage them? What's the worst case? DL's FFP gets better and provides better value to the customer. Which is a bigger waste, investing time sending the postcard, or investing the time telling people not to send postcards?

Okay - Point A to Point B (ATL-NRT-MNL, MNL-NOG-DTW-ATL) - I paid for Business Elite, service = POOR, Inflight Team=Poor (besides Pilots), Sky Priority = HORRIBLE, Boarding Process (100+Elites)=POOR, Luggage on completely different belt at DTW and ATL = POOR, received long after others with priority bags.

You are right, if I want first class, I pay for it and I have expectations on what that should entail, and a friendly person may just be one of them. The problem is not always the product, its the people in the equation. Sadly, that won't change anytime soon.

They cannot provide even first class experiences, and that is my beef. Economy is one thing, but to this point, Best in Class, not sure how that can compare since they run so poorly in many other regards.

Lower your M-fares and more people will buy them!

About 4 years ago when TATL M-fares were cheaper, I used to buy them and exchanged my PMUs. On my destinations the difference between an upgradeable return fare has gone from ~$800 to about $2000 which is beyond my reach. Not surprisingly, at the same time usage of PMUs has dropped to less than 20% per Jeff.

Based on conversations with a few PM/DM friends/clients, I am convinced that if upgradeable TATL fares were ~$1000 more than sLUT fares, that PMU usage would at least triple. BTW, DL could easily test the waters having a limited 30-day M-fare sale (e.g., to a few destinations).

The outcome, of course, is to get them to improve Skymiles. DL is missing the boat on so many things. Award Calendar - Low Award Availability - Online Booking. Just to name a few.

A number of NW frequent flyers worked hard last year and handed out thousands of fliers highlighting the changes that DL/NW had made, and how they compared to the other airlines.

At that time, NW had snuck in a huge change to their frequent flyer program, by charging Plats $100 per change, with no free changes allowed. Beancounter logic was used, and of course their eyes glistened when they thought of the hundreds of millions more in fees they'd be able to squeeze out of their loyalest flyers.

The effort was halfway successful. Platinum members ended up getting 2 free changes, with additional changes at $50 each. This was far below what we had hoped for (8x change for Plat, 4x for Gold and 2x for Silver), but at least it was something.

This change saved NW and DL elites tens of millions of dollars in change and redeposit fees. All because some fed up Flyertalkers didn't like the road that DL was heading down.

I have no idea if the postcard idea will garner any positive results. I do know that most longtime NW and DL FF members don't know how bad the program has gotten. How many times do we see posts from new members who have discovered it.

However cynical you may want to be, we were promised Best In Class, and the best of both airlines during the merger. I'm not expecting St. Nick to come down my chimney with free unlimited Biz class upgrades.

I do expect for low awards to be available at a better rate than they are now. Real mileage charts for all parts of the world, not just the US, working award calendars, online booking tools are urgently needed.

In the long run DL is only hurting it's long term prospects for survival. With reduced capacity they can fill most planes. If even a small amount, say 10% of their elites defect permanently and aren't replaced, then that will certainly snowball at some point. In lean years only the strong will survive.

You know, this is a great point.
We already know of people leaving SkyMiles (aka whiners ;)), and of people sticking with SkyMiles and willing to defend SkyMiles as best in class (for various reasons) from the endless threads in this forum.

Isn't the real question, is Delta managing to bring in NEW frequent fliers with their disaster of a FFP??
Have we even had one thread since the merger here stating along the lines of:
New to Delta, loving SkyMiles!! or New to Delta, glad I moved!!

I think seatback fliers should only be done in odd numbered years. :)

If many of these problems are brought to light, especially in the press, then I think that DL will have to pay more attention to it. I'm not advocating bra burning or anything, but burning/destroying your DL elite card at certain hub airports could be an interesting tactic.

I do understand that it's a hard time to be an airline. Many of the changes would actually save the airline money, and increase revenue through more bookings.

I know I was extremely loyal to NW, because even through strikes and other problems they treated me right. I know that NW is never coming back. DL does need to get on board with more customer service orientated folk, and get back on track.

Not that it matters to you, but it may come as a surprise that I support your efforts. I have advocated here several times that some sort of organized effort with the publicity is the way to go. It is not that the folks on Virgina Ave are bad people, it just takes more than a few people posting on FT to move the meter. Unfortunately, it takes the press as well.

Two items to consider....

If you do it, make sure you have a sufficient number of people sending in the cards. One or two a day will hurt the cause, not help it.

I would reach out to SMI on a personal level before you pull the trigger on any one item. i.e. they know the award calender does not function. They have said they have committed the resources to fixing it. It would serve the group well to know where they are in the process before that issue being picked to be the "cause".

Good luck with whatever "cause" you pick......