DTWflyer

DL we will be back. I already miss you.
Sad to hear what is happening and how it impacts your employees and the communities you serve.

Trust me, I have a whole bunch of travel I'm ready and wanting to book and fly for 2020 for a whole variety of reasons; personal, leisure, business.
As soon as it makes sense, as soon as its safe, as soon as its feasible.

Not just you guys but some many businesses, employees, and industries that I frequent often are all affected by this.
This is such a strange time in so many ways and not normal for anyone.]
I get it, I know why we are doing what we do, but at the end of the day it still hard to process what the heck is going on and what the near-term future looks like for everyone.

KDCAflyer

The Feds would likely step in and provide revenue guarantees to support a minimum level of operations before allowing the big three to suspend completely.

There is still a need for a minimum level of air service, especially for government traffic.

givionte

That's what happens when you only keep enough cash on hand to keep your business running for a month. They treated their business like a Mom & pop shop, and are now paying the price. Delta and others blew their profits on stock buybacks, and now they want to beg taxpayers to save them. It's gross, there better be huge concessions to benefit taxpayers for saving them.

Duke787

DAL management would've been thrown out without the stock buybacks -- they are responsible to the shareholders, employees, and customers.

In my view they've treated employees very well with the highest profit sharing of any US3 over the past few years including $1.6B this year (would you call that "blowing their profits"??). They've treated the shareholders well through stock buybacks and until this crisis very steady returns in the market. And they've treated customers well with strong customer service, investing in the hard product, and providing the best on-time rates of the majors.

I find it incredibly hard to blame DAL for the current situation. They've struck a really nice balance between their 3 major stakeholders which is incredibly rare in the business world (just look at AAL which in contrast has focused solely on appeasing investors -- with mediocre success -- while ignoring the fact that happy customers and employees can actually drive up business value).

ekozie

I agree that Delta has balanced stakeholder needs the best of the big three, but it's a red herring. All of that success would be relevant only if DL wasn't facing the same immediate cashflow crisis as everyone else. I get that the rest of the industry was involved in buybacks at the expense of balance sheets, but others' choices do not excuse one's own. I would even argue that Delta tried more than AA, UA, or WN to be responsible to more than share price alone by taking ownership stakes in foreign airlines instead of more buybacks, but it looks now like that decision may only serve to amplify losses in this pandemic.6.8.0

rizrizriz

We were one of them (3 of us) flew out of MCO > SLC > SMF (752 first leg, 739 second leg) yesterday, 17 Mar. 122 open seats out of MCO, 121 open seats out of SLC > SMF
There were at least 5 open seats up front both legs, I think it was 8 out of MCO. And no one on the upgrade standby list. :~(

FA said they were flying to MSP today (18th) then DEN and both had something like 30 seats taken only for each flight. Course might have changed, in particular not sure if they would have left before or earthquake!! Just crazy times

ChicagoKev

Was trying to get any intel out of delta.com; no useful news releases, but I came to suspect they were going to drop my domestic JFK connection flight segment (no longer appears in searches despite many seats shown as available when I look at my reservation),

So I re-booked with a connection through ATL in hopes that the flight will still take off, new ticket price was a third cheaper than original ticket.

musicdude91

Says they're parking half their fleet

https://www.usatoday.com/story/trave...2863432001/How fast is travel demand plummeting as the coronavirus crisis deepens?

Delta Air Lines said Wednesday that it plans to park at least 600 planes, more than half of its fleet. That's double the number of parked planes it announced just a few days ago.

In a memo to employees, Delta CEO Ed Bastian described the airline's latest cuts as a partial shutdown of the airline. Delta now plans to cut 70% of its flights, up from an already-historic 40% reduction announced on Friday as the airline's March revenue takes a $2 billion hit from a plunge in bookings.

"As we draw down our operation, I know how painful it is to essentially hit the 'pause button' on so many things that are core to what we do for our customers and our mission to connect the world,'' he said. "But what will never stop is the spirit of the Delta people, which is shining through brighter than ever even in this dark moment.''

ChamplinAl

Delta currently has 60 international aircraft sent to locations for "resting" because of the COVID-19: 23 at MZJ (AZ), 35 at BHM (AL) and 1 at CWF (LA). My question is did DL predetermine where and what combinations of a/c were going? MZJ is mostly for WFU (withdrawn from use) as opposed to being STORED, and BHM is close to ATL for when they are returned and placed back into service. The breakdown at MZJ: 3 B777-200LRs (which I suspect WILL return back into service), 7 A330-300s (which I suspect WILL return back into service), 5 A330-200s (which may be iffy on returning back to service), 2 B767-400ERs (these frames are DLs' newest B767s and I suspect WILL return back to service), and 6 B767-300ERs (which I suspect will be "retired" permanently). The breakdown at BHM: 4 A350-900XWBs (will be returned - new a/c), 1 B777-200LR (will be returned), 3 B777-200ERs (should be returned), 6 A330-300s (should be returned), 4 A330-200 (I suspect WILL be returned), 6 B767-400ER (again, I suspect WILL be returned), 11 B767-300ERs (which I am not positive ALL will be returned), and 1 A330-900NEO (new a/c and will definitely be returned). The 1 at CWF, an A330-300, I would be surprised if it doesn't return.

musicdude91

Their stock has dropped from $58.51 on Feb 19, to $23.49 on March 18.

Skystreak

Warren can just snap up the whole airline at a nice discount with that $128 billion in cash he has.

Global Adventurer

A very sad day for me. Been dreading this, but I finally cancelled three flights, a cruise and two hotel reservations. I was really looking forward to this extended trip.

Considering the unknown, I have no clue when I'll be traveling again😞

GrayAnderson

As of a few days ago, traffic was down to at least early 1980s levels. It is probably closing in on the late 60s at this point.

I'm not gonna lie...I think we might see some very odd things slip back into the mix, such as milk runs, to allow Delta et al to maintain some level of service while stemming losses. I also wouldn't be surprised to see operations at some smaller airports get consolidated down. I've used my area as an example, but there is basically no reason for either DL or AA to maintain service to PHF at this point (pre-crisis DL had 3x/day out of PHF, all to ATL; I think AA sat around 6-8, covering both CLT and PHL). It would almost assuredly to be cheaper to pay for a shuttle bus for a few weeks to ORF or RIC to let folks get to cars parked there from previous flights, and thereafter comp a Lyft or a taxi ride, and just can operations at PHF until this blows over. I doubt we're the only airport in this situation; somewhere else, a friend and I were mulling over the question of whether operations to some "secondary" airports in major areas (OAK/SJC; BUR/SNA/LGB) might not get dropped entirely for the duration to try and consolidate loads. Honestly, if it weren't for the local dynamics, I'm not even sure that service into LGA would still make sense in favor of a consolidation into JFK, and I could say the same thing about BWI/IAD and MDW.

I agree that normally, measures like this would be nonsense, but...well, if air traffic is gonna be off 75-80% for a few months I don't think "normally" applies.

Any aid package will maintain some level of service (and since Greyhound is increasingly a skeletal remain and Amtrak can't plug the hole in a lot of places, propping up air travel is really the only option out there for that travel which does have to happen), but it might well end up looking a lot more like "2-3x flights/day on most routes, with many airports only having direct service to a single hub". I can't see current market dynamics allowing for much more for the next few months.

Also to hazard a prediction, but I suspect that in the next few weeks yield management is gonna shake the algorithms and get rid of the super-cheap fares. DL probably can't induce enough travel to really bother fighting on bargain-basement prices at this stage. I would not be shocked to see the airlines and the Feds hash something out here to stabilize fares in line with what would previously have been a one-week or two-week advance fare. The walk-up fares to Orlando right now are just insane if you're willing to take a BE fare (which in turn comes with the current fare change rules and likely a row to yourself)...I've been showing $80-92 for a same-day return for flights, and $40 or so for a walk-up one-way.

Edit: If I was drawing out a "logical" system, I'd probably look to retrench down to one airport in each metro area in the hopes of maintaining some semblance of load factor. The main exception would be extreme geographical dispersion (EWR vs JFK/LGA or LAX/ONT) but in general I'd be pushing a consolidation. I'd consider running one-stops to a lot of the smaller FL airports, probably slamming them together with MCO flights (so you'd get something like ATL-MCO-RSW) and pushing almost everyone through ATL who wasn't coming from the Northeast (and even then, I might consolidate that). The same thing would probably show up with the smaller airports in the Rockies/Plains. Again, a lot of this is down to the fact that it would probably be better to run one flight with at least a passable load factor for part of the run than to run two or more near-empty flights (we're really racking up stories all over the place of flights running with a handful of pax).

The other thing I wonder is whether DL couldn't operate everything outside of the inter-hub flights under about 1000-1200 miles with the DLC fleet...but I don't know what the rules are about ditching mainline flights in lieu of DLC flights (more due to capacity needs, or a lack thereof, than questions of crew compensation). It'll be interesting to see where the A220 shows up, too...

GrayAnderson

So, just some observations:
-For "today" (03/19), DL is running 7x RIC-ATL (3 737, 4 MD-80)
-For Monday (03/23), DL has 10x RIC-ATL scheduled (4 737, 5 MD-80, 1 MD-90)
-One week out (03/26), DL has 10x RIC-ATL scheduled (3 737, 7 MD-80)
-Two weeks out (04/02), DL has 8x RIC-ATL scheduled (2 737, 6 MD-80)
-Three weeks out (04/09), DL has 8x RIC-ATL scheduled (3 737, 5 MD-80)
-Four weeks out (04/16), DL has 7x RIC-ATL scheduled (2 737, 5 MD-80)
-Five weeks out (04/23), DL has 8x RIC-ATL scheduled (3 737, 5 MD-80)...but one of the flights (a morning 737 flight at 0640) is only showing a full-J fare at over $700. For reference, almost all of the other flights after this week are showing at either $49 (or $54 on Fri/Sun)
-Six weeks out (04/30), DL has 8x RIC-ATL scheduled (2 737, 6 MD-80)

I suspect there will be downward revisions, but the drift from 737s to MD-80s is telling. On the loose basis of this, I wonder if we might not see a little more activity from the MDs (basically until they hit a maintenance cycle) with larger planes being parked. How does fuel consumption, etc. compare on an MD-80 family plane versus an A32X or 737?

Edit: Anecdotally, I'm seeing a similar pattern JFK-LAX: 5 flights for today, up to 10 next Thursday, then down to 7/day each of the following Thursdays. Notably they're back up to 9x/day when you get into May (which speaks to "sort that all out when we get closer"). It feels like they're holding off on reworking the next week or so until things get closer while slashing the schedule further out (basically, April's got the slashing in).

MSPeconomist

What's happening with the subsidized routes to/from tiny airports?