Of course it does. A profitable company has a much greater ability to upgrade its products and services, pay its people more (which means they will generally be happier and provide better service), invest in technology, invest in its operations, etc. all of which translate to a better experience for the consumer....

Sorry, these threads about the DL FF program are getting old. They have been hashed over, and over again.

Personally I wished they just went with dollar spend. I will definitely admit that redemption rates are pretty high. That said, Delta has become my primary airline due to that fact it runs the proverbial trains on time and provides a decent enough experience. They also price domestic first competitively enough that I can just go with and not deal with chasing status.

FF programs were born precisely to make people choose an airline despite those other reasons!

Limited criteria in those rankings and focused on occasional travelers. Even with those, I'd think that Miles' expiration, airports covered, and mainline vs RJ fleet might help Delta a bit. For a lot of us the Elite program, quality of F, upgrades etc matter much, and those criteria were not included.

Sure. Southwest and Alaska are great airlines to fly for occasional travelers who fly from their points A to B. Good luck flying them to Europe from the East Coast.

Well my highly subjective ranking says that DL's program is ranked right about where it should be. And there are other highly subjective rankings that say the same thing. I haven't seen any highly subjective rankings that rank DL's FFP anywhere near the top. Again, I personally couldn't care less where any of these rankings place DL, I just note that pretty much all of them rank DL near the bottom, highly subjective or not.

I'd be willing to bet that they release less at low within 21 days of travel.

That's a good textbook answer but I haven't seen any evidence that DLs profit run has improved my experience. Granted I don't fly much domestic, but the int'l J experience has certainly not improved over the past 2 years.

Delta was the first airline to merge in the current round of consolidation and become a mega-carrier. As soon as the dust settled on the merger, they scaled back their frequent flier program, figuring that they were now big enough that they could attract customers without it.

United did the same as soon as their merger was complete, although not to the same extent, perhaps due to the problems they have been facing since integration.

American will likely do the same very soon.

Frequent flier programs were born when the industry was cutthroat competitive. It was just one tool used by airlines to attract customers. Now, the big megacarriers have no need for such a program to attract customers, because customers have little choice.

Fun fact: until recently, Air New Zealand charged a membership fee to join their rewards scheme. That's right, you had to pay actual money to sign up, which is unheard of in the US. They were the only game in town. If you were a frequent international traveler to different countries, you didn't really have any other reasonable options, so they could get away with it. I don't think US carriers will go that far, of course.

As the market adjusts to the reduced level of competition, I expect to see most of the airlines gut their frequent flier programs even further. However, this may be retarded if the ULCCs like Spirit and Allegiant expand significantly.

In the case of the NZ FF program membership fee, perhaps we could think of it as being somewhat similar to a lounge membership fee in that airlines outside of North America tend to give lounge access as an important FF benefit while USA legacy carriers force all but a few elites to purchase lounge memberships if the passenger wishes to use lounges for all travel, domestic as well as international.

At the end of the day, why do rankings matter? If it serves its purpose for you specifically, isn't that good enough?

Most may say that Southwest has a good FF program.

Elite Upgrade Rate: 0%

Top fliers get free Lounge: 0%

When is the last time a Southwest Passenger, sitting in the Southwest Lounge, got that e-mail saying that your "upgrade" has been confirmed?

When is the last time a Southwest Passenger used Miles for a free flight on a partner airline?

But yes, you may find it a little easier to score a free flight.

Kind of hard to compare all of the programs. Some airlines small, others large.

A free ticket on Alaska isn't quite the same as Delta - the Alaska free ticket is more limited in destinations whereas Delta is larger and more destinations. Of course, you may be able to use the partner options to expand your options - just talking about a free ticket on that airlines own Metal.

I don't know that I've disagreed with anything you have said, as I have stated several times, I personally couldn't care less. I guess the question to ask is if rankings don't matter then why do all these rankings get published? Because no one cares? I am simply making the point that pretty much every ranking puts DL's FFP at the bottom. Again... I don't care (and obviously neither do you) but that's a simple fact.