xliioper

This has been pointed out once already, but the OP seems to have ignored it. As DL announced last year, they will be dramatically reducing the number of CR2's it uses from 343 down to 125. This means many routes will likely see an upgauge in equipment size. As others have noted, the larger RJ's have FC and are markedly more comfortable than the CR2's. Also, mainline 717's are being added and will also pick up some capacity from the CR2 reduction.

http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/s...act/55970562/1

In short, I think OP needs to take a deep breadth and do a bit more research. DL is still early in the CR2 reduction program, but when it is done, DL will be quite a bit different from the airline the OP is ranting about.

BiggAW

As I noted before, Southwest is domestic. But I won't have to deal with Delta for that one. Air France and others fly that route. But I'd fly to Heathrow on British Airways and ride the Eurostar the rest of the way.

cfwolfs

Yes, delta is bringing 717s on board but the OP doesn't think those are real planes. Anything smaller than a 737 isn't a real plane.

Also, the 55 cents a mile is government mandated cost, not actual costs. Maintenance, wear tear, etc. That means that if a government employee has to drive 500+ miles round trip to an airport, in addition to the 10 hours of travel time, there's a cost of about $275 involved. Makes flying to the smaller airport a little more worth while.

I'll
Bet
The
Low cost model is great for some airlines! But not for all of them.

BiggAW

No need for that. The blue 737s that took all their business are starting them with that lesson right in the face.

So they are going to be O&O? Those things are still a bit small, but I guess they could pass as a real commercial aircraft, unlike CRJ's and Embraers. However, I'll still fly Southwest if I possibly can, even with the connection at BWI for flights to DTW. I'd fly on an O&O 717 if I couldn't get a Southwest flight for a reasonable price, and if they have 6'3" of headroom. That's still a bit small of a plane.

We'll see. They still act like a dinosaur. When they get rid of first class and assigned seats, I'll really start to listen, and especially when they get rid of outsourced flights altogether. At least they could make the situation a bit better by just stopping the outsourcing and running the toy jets O&O.

I read that article, and GGGAAAAHHHHH. They are getting rid of the 50's, but then adding 70/76's. Those things all need to go somewhere else.

us2

My guess would be that they're making money on the route from people who have neither the time to spare nor the inclination to waste it in Hartford or New York morning and evening traffic. @:-)

UVU Wolverine

Southwest isn't a low-cost operation anymore, and they pay their pilots the most compared to other legacy operators using 737s. I agree that LCCs are going to be much more popular (Spirit, Allegient, etc) in the future with how price sensitive customers are, just as you said you were. However, the first bit of labor trouble has begun at Southwest, and it is only going to get worse. How bad? I cannot say, but there will be some major problems as Southwest's management is now far more in-line with other legacy carriers from a cost reduction point of view.

HongKonger

Why do you hate first class an assigned seating so much?

WN is garbage.

Calchas

So far as I can see, the argument basically boils down to, "I don't like X, so X should be banned."

tristar76

Why right-side?

beachmouse

Anyone else remember how in the early 00s, there was a quirk in NWA's labor agreement with its mainline pilots and their commuter partners actually had to pull a couple rows of seats from many RJs in order to stay below an agreed number of seats per plane on partner routes? It was the best domestic economy leg room of the post-deregulation age, and far better than anything I've ever gotten on a large mainline plane. (I've got atypically long femurs, and there are a couple of Airbus configurations that have left my kneecaps literally driven into the empty air sickness bags in the seat pocket while the people in front of me were in full upright position.)

Those RJs were utterly awesome for that, and I'd take that configuration any day over the 737 cattle car.

hazelrah

Delta is well aware. Take GRB for instance. Green Bay used to have 6 mainline flights a day to DTW and about the same to MSP - all gone. I did a quick peek MSP<-> GRB and it's all Barbie jets with I think one mainline.

Since the MKE implosion this is the new reality to Southwest encroachment into traditional NW markets - something that NW never really had to deal with. The CRJ is Delta's competitive response.

hazelrah

That is just a hyperbolic response. Arguably in an apples-to-apples comparison WN's coach experience is superior to Delta coach.

hazelrah

It was the Avros, which everybody loved. Midwest's "Flying Turtles" Fairchild/Dornier 328 weren't too bad either

The CRJs are like an insect pest, regardless of the financial numbers there were so many of the CRJ pests that they overwhelmed the competition

WidgetKid

You, sir, CLEARLY have not done your research and are just as uninformed as everybody else here makes you out to be.

Delta DOES fly to PVD, with 3 MD-88's DAILY to ATL.

BiggAW

What traffic? There isn't any bad traffic that I know of. And to get to NYC, you take the train. A lot of people fly longer flights out of NYC, because they offer a huge selection of carriers and routes that we don't have here.

Good. That's the one part where you don't want to skimp. That and maintenance/ airworthiness. They are a low-cost operation in the whole way that they operate their planes.

It's horribly inefficient. Because they don't have stupid assigned seats, Southwest flies an average of 5 flights a day with their aircraft as opposed to 4 with the equivalent planes and routes with other carriers. Not flying the 5th flight is just pure waste. First Class is a total waste because it decreases the number of people who can fly on a plane. That's waste and inefficiency.

Southwest makes the system more efficient while making the experience for the passengers better. No need to deal with the assigned seating mess that other airlines use, quicker on and off, etc.

Southwest is more efficient, per plane landing/takeoff, per dollar, per minute, per whatever. It's all mathematically provable. While other airlines can't just magically switch to all B737's, they could move towards fewer types of planes in their fleets, running all flights O&O, and re-equipping for all economy could be done over time. Getting rid of assigned seating could be done overnight, by just not assigning seating.

It's also a mathematical certainty that Delta's [and the other dinosaur carriers'] archaic model is artificially creating airport congestion. If the big airports all banned planes with less than ~130, it would significantly ease congestion on the runways. Even if you allowed 717's in with 117 seat single-class configurations, it would still help congestion a lot over 50- and 75-seat toy planes.

The whole system would also be more efficient if everything was single-class. These first class and business class things are just ridiculous wastes of space. I'd love to see an all-economy A380. Over 500 people on a single jet.

So their response is to give up and downsize? That's great. Props to Southwest for figuring out how to more efficiently serve three cities out of one airport. The CRJ is just going to drive Delta farther into the crapper. Many people don't want to fly on those pathetic excuses for an airplane.

Yup. Delta is also unpredictable. I've had good experiences on the MD-80/90 series, but bad experiences with Airbus A320's. I'll fly on the Airbuses when they're cheap (like I bundled an Alaska flight from JNU with one MSP-DTW), but only if I have to. They're like the scum of the full-sized fleet.