Delta Blues

"Last October, Delta announced that, despite the ongoing recession, it had made nearly a billion dollars in the previous quarter, its largest profit in years. A week later, U.S. News & World Report released a detailed analysis of airline quality and concluded that Delta was the worst large carrier in the country�a stigma that Northwest, even in its darkest days, never carried."


http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/medi...1/Delta-Blues/

Very intersting article. Can't say that I have anything to add, so I think I'll go get some popcorn and watch the PMNW vs. PMDL battles commence now

Thanks for posting this. Sadly we know most of this from personal experience.

And queue the kool-aid drinkers!

Presumably we're expecting kool-aid drinkers from both sides here?

Wow. Was the author of that article a little biased? Sounds like they had a little bit of an ax to grind...

What evidence do you provide to refute the facts of the article? If you don't have any, then your "biased" statement applies to your post as well.

And you post seems biased against the post you reference, and my most seems biased against yours. Ah, it never ends.

Give me a break. As a matter of journalism it's not unusual these days to write things like this, however a correspondent from MSP who obviously yearns for the days of NWA should be viewed as just that - capable of bias.

There are lots of supporting data in there which I admire and respect, but peppered in there is a lot of warm-fuzzy type non-journalistic drivel.

Some "facts" that they got wrong:

"don’t even think about trying to use miles to get to Paris or Amsterdam."

As many of us know, using miles to go to Europe usually requires a stop in CDG or AMS...

"There’s no nice way to say this: Delta pisses people off. They’ve pissed off more people over the years than some airlines have flown"

The evidence for this? Look at all the websites I found!

"Competing carriers (notably Southwest) have added more routes of their own while Delta has cut back on flights to ensure fuller planes (Northwest sometimes flew half-empty planes)"

The premise of this sentence is utopian nonsense. What a great business plan... Every airline, including DL, sends out some planes half - or even more - empty.

"a thoughtful Northwest agent might offer to put you on an earlier flight; with a smile, and without a charge. "

Aw, isn't that special... And completely unsupported in two ways - how often would this happen at NWA and it neglects to mention that their policy was to charge for it. Secondly, it supposes that no other airline does this, because after all they aren't NWA. I have been the beneficiary of kind DL agents many times, but I don't claim that other airlines are unkind...

"Delta’s ongoing acquisition of used MD-90s—flown by no other major American airline (the primary users have been in Saudi Arabia and China)"

Whuh? Let's hone that bias but perverting the reader into thinking that since only Saudi Arabia and China fly them, there must be something bad. Poor journalism.

The whole "BUSINESS, DELTA STYLE" section is a one-sided provincial rant against the "other" which in this case is the ridiculous notion that management in the South can't possibly be any good since they're backwards hillbillies..

I didn't say I agreed or disagreed with the article, but I do agree with your follow up post as it contains facts rather than a simple statement. As in all journalism these days, you are only presented with the "facts" that will sell papers/etc. I find it more interesting to read this forum when backable facts are used to refute something.

I don't know. As a former NWA employee and presently a DL employee, the article seems to be pretty much dead on. Not to mention what goes on behind the scenes between NWA and DL are like night and day.

As an ex-NW flyer, I would be the first to say that NW was not some kind of company runs by angels, however, from the customer perspective we have lost a lot by this merger as follows: 1) Functional IT, 2) Superlative elite line service, 3) various and sundry fleet that has been expropriated/phased out by Delta.

While Delta management did accomplish the merger at warp speed, and they should be commended for this, customers continue to pay a heavy cost due to Delta's poor IT. It is 2010, award bookings and irrops. should not require manual intervention.

It's been 2011 for awhile now, but I still agree with your point.

I have to agree with those who say this article is highly biased and it sounds like the writer has an ax to grind...

Even though it is biased, the article makes many good points, and I agree with most of it. But the manner in which the information is presented is pretty poor, IMHO, and I believe the style is meant to engage the kool-aide drinkers and the haters equally.

For a moderate like myself, it was a waste of a few minutes of my life.

Interesting that this magazine assigns their arts editor to report on a business. To their credit they probably do not do a whole lot of business reporting as it looks to be more of the "food and social scene" type magazine. There seems to be very little actual fact-checking, and more hearsay and conjecture than anything else. Not to mention the author misspells Delta "Airlines"- although he can probably blame that on the non-existent editing.

I think there is plenty of dirt on DL that a reputable business publication could report on, however this mag is clearly not that.