Why does Delta have your loyalty?
 

The thread about "second worst FF program" had me thinking about my reasons for being "loyal" to Delta. The specifics of the FF program are not very high on my list, and I'm sure everyone has their own specific reasons why Delta is their choice.

Here's my rationale for being Delta-loyal:

DEN is my "home airport" and my most common route is DEN -> MSP. When I started doing this trip weekly for work, I evaluated United and Delta. United was flying small regional jets on that route while Delta used mainline. I'm 6'2" with broad shoulders, so regional jets are pure torture.

I could've also flown Frontier or Southwest, but I hate a la carte and I hate open seating.

I suppose if United had a better hard product flying my regular route, I'd probably consider them, since I'd have many more direct flight options from DEN.


So...that's my reason. What's yours?

when ATL is your home airport
can't choose at all ......

-Delta serves the most destinations out of NYC than any other airline.
-My most common route is LGA<-->ORD and the Delta shuttle is extremely convenient. I can leave my apartment 45 minutes before a flight and still arrive with time to spare.
-Delta's customer service is actually helpful and occassionally bends the rules for me as a GM (maybe AA/UA will do the same, i dont know)
-I am at about 50% this year with upgrades and 100% in EC. Certainly the novelty wears off after a while but its nice to have a little extra comfort.

I agree that i'd be earning more miles and have an easier time redeeming miles on AA but at the end of the day, convenience, reliability and comfort trump mileage earned

Edited to add: Yes, AA, UA and JetBlue have a pretty large NYC presence. That said, it's an hour to Newark for UA and an 45-60 minutes to JFK for B6. The AA terminal in LGA is awful while Delta at LGA is lovely.

Hub captive and refugee from PMNW.

DL seems to work for me with good operations and decent IROPs handling. I've been doing fine so far with the FF program, upgrades, G A P fares, SWUs and GUCs, etc. but I realize that I'm paying high fares out of MSP for the convenience of nonstops.

Now if DL just would give MSP some decent aircraft and stop ripping out FC/BE/D1 seats.....and undo the redo of the F/G SC to bring back the cubicles, plus give me some cheese and cracker options consistently.

^ this

+1. Exactly

DL (the old CO and NW) gets me home and that is the most important thing to me. I live in the RDU area and I was CP with US for many years. There were too many times that US would get as far as CLT/DCA and tell me that was the best they could do. US GAs and TAs would not even try to move me to another airline to get me home. That is why I left them and now dread every time I now board an AA flight (even as a Plat). After watching what UA did to CO, I bet my SM account that the new AA will operate closer to the old US. Every airline has their problems, but US constantly has them.

Profitable therefore stable airline.
Great ontime performance.
Great IROPS handling.
Great frontline staff.

I don't see the logic in picking an airline on its Frequent Flyer program.
Each to their own I suppose.
Since early 2010 I don't recall a bad experience with them.

DL gets me to work and home on-time with my bags.

Oh, and I hate AA and can barely stand UA.

No complaints, except reduced upgrades at the window.

On time performance.

Attitudes of staff, across the board (I came from UA)

If I have to connect, SLC MSP DTW all seem better than ORD,DFW, DEN.

1. Rock solid completion and on-time performance.
2. Best hard product in TATL J with good prices and routings for my destinations.
3. Airport staff at DTW move mountains for me when I show up T-37 minutes before my INTL flight with no boarding pass and bag I want to check -- and the bag always makes it!
4. TATL J Service is consistently decent, and sometimes great. Food is pretty solid.

Okay there is no absolutely no way I can agree with this. Even AAs 77W J product is better-seriously comparing that to 767 thats so narrow its like a coffin?

And Im assuming you are only comparing to US legacies, SQ/EK/NZ/VS are vastly superior hard products that fly TATL J.

AMEX MQMs. It's what keeps this low-value flyer at diamond.

I also find the entire Delta experience the best of the US3, especially since I buy the cheapest tickets possible. I love having free booze in Comfort plus. I'm at about 90% on upgrades for the year. I make use of my amex companion certificates. I know the endless arguments about being having difficulty redeeming miles, but this year I had four seats in J JFK-LAX-SYD-AKL/PER-BNE-LAX-JFK. I like the offerings out of JFK and LGA. I hate going to EWR as I live in Brooklyn.

- Home Airport: PDX
- Delta is the only airline at PDX with a direct flights to Asia (NRT) and Europe (AMS)
- Delta flies from PDX to just about every Delta hub. This means that I can more or less get anywhere with no more than 1 transfer.
- Delta is building out a hub at SEA, which is kind of a boon for PDX travelers because in most cases we can fly away from our destination and pad our MQMs by 1000 on each RT.
- Routes to/from PDX and to/from SEA have pretty good complimentary upgrade availability. From what I've gathered, west coast travelers seem to have an easier time clearing upgrades than people traveling on the other side of the country, but of course YMMV.

ATL

That is all

Nearest airport has limited choice (US and DL)
DM treatment is quite good (except for new SDC policy).
They get me there on time.
I feel like the problems with the FF program are marginal (i.e. 25% worse than the next choice) so I get most of that plus the above.

so I should say that I AM loyal to DL but I'm certainly not exclusive to DL but the reasons I stay w/ them are many...
...They get me to my destination safely and frequently we are on-time if not early
....IRROPS handling is superb
....SC agents are quite helpful
.....Consistency of the product, particularly in Long-haul J
.....and most importantly, they seem to value my loyalty. No, they don't let me UG a $400 TPAC ticket for free but then again I don't EXPECT them too. they're a business and If I wanted D1 bad enough, I'd buy it but they treat me well. I had a unique month last month in that on three occasions in one month I needed DL to be flexible and in each case they were. I needed:
to change an LUT ticket to later in the day (due to a job interview) and they only charged me the fare difference and waived the change fee
to change a paid J ticket on Alitalia. there was a sched change and they pieced together a routing that was very desirable to me but that they, technically, couldn't even sell but they made it work
to cancel a ticket due to a medical reason and they gave me the full value of it for future use.

I don't try to "game" the system and I don't make a habit of asking for exceptions, but do so only when needed, and not whimsically. All in all, I'm pleased with Delta and at the end of the day, I recognize that they are a business and a for-profit one at that.

Home airport is an United hub and I refuse to fly on thier fleet of @*%! boxes anymore. Going out of either DCA or IAD I have a decent upgrade percentage and am 100% on the year for EC(The free drinks have made this not a horrible option).

I make most of my airline miles in CC spend so the miles earned flying is somewhat negligible since I do not fly TPAC or TATL.

Airline hostage in Atlanta. 😧 I like American, and FF awards are less miles, but layovers in DFW add an extra hour or two. It's just easier to book a nonstop on Delta.

MSP home, so not much choice, especially for international travel => "forced loyalty"
And I own their stock, over 100% ROI, so yeah, I want everyone on FT to fly DL exclusively => fake loyalty =>I'll dump the stock when necessary.

The only thing I do not like about DL is there FFP. I think their inflight and check in service is much better than AA and UA. Also, I really like the lounge in ATL. Too bad there will be no more DL lounge access for BR members next year.

For me the key thing is the best looking flight attendant uniforms of all the major US carriers.

It's all about choices.

For years and the last time I counted (pre-AA/US merger), Delta has more flights out of LEX before 8 AM than any other airline has all day.

The airports they use. ATL is a 35 minute flight from home, and I actually like navigating that airport. DTW is just over an hour, and is also easy to use. Between those 2 airports, I can get to 99% of the places I need to go. If I flew UA or AA, I would be stuck in places like EWR (just ....ing shoot me now), ORD (which, based on personal experiences, has an on-time rate of 1%), or CLT (meh).

The amex card makes it easy to get extra miles and MQMs

I've flown 3 flights on United in the last year. Each of them was delayed 3+ hours or just straight up cancelled, leaving me stranded. Over that same time period I have 50+ segments with Delta. My worst experience was going to be a 1.5 hour delay, and they just rebooked me on a flight that actually got me home earlier.

The hard product is better. Out of BNA, I'm usually on a MD-88, MD-90, A319, or 717 on Delta. On United or AA, it's a lot of ERJs and CRJs.

edit: you can't say f*ck on this message board? Ha ha ha, it won't even let me put W T eff.

1MM projected for second half of 2016, for what it's worth. Anyway, it would be silly to drop them now and I'm always hoping at some point DL may bring that program on a par level with competitors.

Also, SkyTeam international network and the partnership with VS work for me.
Of course, I could join AF or VS programs...

Delta provides the best on time ness record in the US.
Best on board and front line employee services.
IROPs.
Accommodating. Make exceptions to rules for unexpected circumstances.

If you pick airlines with FF program the most important criteria, you are worthless to airlines. It is all just business as usual. Delta gets you to your destination on time and safely, provides superior onboard service, has happy employees.

I think more likely is that AA and UA continue to downgrade their programs to DL as opposed to DL upgrading theirs.

Started w/ DL even though in US/AA mini-hub (DCA) - Amex helps - on time - IRROPS - dont mind connections in ATL/DTW/MSP - moved up slowly from nothing to FO now GM - each level, even basic no status, service always top notch.

What sealed it for me was how they handled a medical situation that came up 2 days prior to a trip with my wife in 12/2014 - call me a sap, but they way they handled themselves and each employee spoke to me, they have a customer for life. Now, I find myself on AA a bit more these days, but always check DL first.

1. Mainline from my home airport and domestic 763s.
2. On time performance and cancellation record.
3. EC+.
4. fewest Y middle seats in the business with highest 1st class percentage in the business.
5. best first class experience from the 3 legacy airlines.

Moved to DL from UA a couple of years ago and never looked back ;)

SEA-based, PMNW frequent flyer to Hawaii and Asia. After the merger, DL managed to maintain good customer service while integrating the personnel and route networks. DL has kept my loyalty by consistently delivering the best customer service of any of the legacies. I don't mind spending a little more for good customer service, and in my mind it has always been worth it to keep flying DL.

By default. Despite my best efforts to stick with AA/B6 this year, still made GM on DL.

I trust them.

They have my back.

For a long time, I simply liked them better. DL offered excellent upgrade chances even as a GM (back in the day) where AA would have required stickers. And I just didn't like United. In some ways it was less convenient to be loyal to DL... definitely going against the grain for a Chicago area resident... but the experience was more enjoyable, so I figured why not.

With DL's unfriendly changes, there's no reason to continue this, so I began laying the groundwork for an exit long ago, which will conclude on December 31 of this year when I'll be over to AA entirely (except to burn miles and GUCs). Fortunately there are no shortage of good choices in this city.

Operational reliability
Fleetwide gogo (don't love gogo, but appreciate the consistency)
Mainline service to destinations accustomed to express-only (717s really helping in this regard)
SFO/JFK SkyClub leaps and bounds above UC
Relatively functional website
Relatively friendly crews
Relatively better food than UA (++ in SCs)
Award availability / prices that at least tend to make sense, even if the skypeso value isn't great
Did I mention it's not United?

What keeps me from being a total shill?
- Generally inferior award partners / pricing though who knows how long this sustains
- Domestic 763 F is... ugh
- Needs more beef out of SFO/SJC, but they're getting there
- Some 57s, 37s and A320s still need power
- it's funny that I need to struggle to come up with these...

Why does Delta have your loyalty?
 

I have no loyalty to any airline. DL has earned a good portion of my business for many of the reasons mentioned in this thread but I am as "loyal" to DL as they are to me which is zero. I have no problem buying a ticket elsewhere if the time / fare better suit my need. DL is a business and I make a business decision, loyalty need not apply.

^

Hub captive. I wish I had choices out of DTW, but most of them connect through ORD, which I really try to avoid.

FF programs for me isn't for the good times. it's for when sh!t hits the fan. Every time it has, Delta has had my back. That's why I'm loyal to them

A bunch of reasons.
- My regular travel destinations include MSP and DTW, so frequent nonstops are nice to have
- Selection of flights out of BOS
- Very good IRROPS handling (and I don't think it's all because I'm PM)
- Amex MQMs mean I can usually bump up one level of status
- Efficient hub airports, by which I mostly mean "not ORD" :D (To be fair, once McNamara opened DTW became really nice to connect through; ATL always was designed right, and MSP's only real weak spot for me is the frequent need to cross through the main shopping concourse between F/G and D/E/C.)
- Wifi-equipped F/Y+/Y layout aircraft on almost all routes these days
- Helpful friendly agents (especially in the SC)...and they reopened the A7 BOS SC!

Some negatives:
- Mediocre partners, though the VS partnership has improved this a bunch
- JFK as a hub? Seriously? T4B is too freaking long, T2 is better than it used to be but still second tier at best, and the insane taxi waits.... The T4 SC is nice though.
- SLC as a hub; the "fingers" layout is like the old PM (and pre-McNamara) NW operation in DTW, which I always disliked, but at least it's a small enough airport that it doesn't get in my way too often. SLC really needs a bigger SC and/or more SCs. (OTOH it beats DEN both operationally and because it doesn't have crazypants conspiracy theories about it or an Evil Killer Horse Statue)