Delta's Easter 2021 Meltdown - 82 flights cancelled 4/4/2021
 

Looks like Delta is having pilot staffing challenges this weekend. As of now 82 flights have been cancelled tomorrow. Be sure to double check to make sure your flight is still operating.

Same thing happened at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Can't wait for Fourth of July weekend when the schedule is even bigger.

Seat blocking
 

Seat blocking will be lifted for the next 2 days to help mitigate this. I’m glad I’m on leave because I’m sure there will be some upset people who booked with the knowledge of blocked seats.

Interesting...was wondering why so many flights were delayed out of DTW today with clear skies! The first two flights to MCO were both delayed, including the 6:40 am over 3 hours! Just odd for a Saturday!

At this point, people shouldn’t (and from my experience, don’t) care. Every non-DL flight I’ve been on this past month has been completely full.

We’re a year+ into this. If the thought of not being 20” away from a seatmate makes someone wilt, perhaps they should consider driving.

1/3 of ppl have at least one jab. The sky is not falling...

Agreed I’m not sure why DL didn’t end seat blocking on April 1st like they originally had scheduled.

I do think most people probably don’t care at this point based on the high loads other airlines have been seeing as of late... but it’s a huge failure for DL because those tickets were sold with the promise of seat blocking.

Platinum hold time officially over 3 hours...

Do you blame them after the way Delta has been milking the PR dry about it?

that's why many paid more to fly DL (and many decided to travel by plane) - under condition of blocked middle. Finding out that they were lied to will not go well...

Cancels actually seem to be edging down a bit for tomorrow. Now at 71 per FlightAware.

https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled/tomorrow

DL PR has been a disaster for the past week. They are setting themselves up for more controversy in the coming days with this new change.

I was wondering why I saw morning cancellations out of DTW tomorrow. Thankfully I seem to be fine for my flights.

Not even a little bit.

When I saw this title, I said, "AGAIN?!" out loud. I don't even fly DL. What a disaster. "Fly Delta: We'll ruin all your holiday plans!" Just wow! Like they don't have enough PR problems.

So they could say they blocked middle seats longer than any other carrier. I’m sure we will see this in our May newsletter “ From Ed “.

Yep - I've flown Delta in the past year because they offer a blocked middle seat (Same with WN when they did it) even though it wasn't the cheapest option or best flight timing. I'd be pretty pissed if Delta said "oops, we screwed up. No blocked middles on this flight to fix our issue" and would absolutely be seeking compensation.

I've had bad experiences on Delta 2x-3x more often than any other airline I've ever flown.

They have time, effort, and money to spare to try and tell me how to live my life and how to vote but no ability to manage and run the business to PROVIDE THE SERVICE I AM PAYING FOR. Add in the terrible FF program and they are at the end of my preferred airline list right next to Southwest.

Beginning to think that the defenders of this airline are on the payroll.

Hmmm ;)

The sycophants are thick and deep on here and always have been. I've been Diamond Medallion (not something I strove for) for several years and I hate flying Delta. Forgot to mention their regional jets are filthy and in terrible condition every time I've flown one (4-6 times per year).

My wife is caught up in this today. I was on a business trip on our anniversary so she joined me and now flying home before me. We paid extra for a delta first class ticket with a connection, basically no cabin service, and a empty seat next to her. What we got was all the bad and none of the good and delta keeps the money. Without the empty seat I would have bought the cheaper direct fc seat on united. Probably could have got a diet coke even something more than goldfish and tiny bottle water. If Delta is just going to back out of their blocking agreement can I back out of the mask idiocy?

She filed a complaint. If delta wants to not do the seat blocking fine but don’t sell me specific product / service then just change it to your benefit at the last moment.

This is what happens when you treat pandemic as a 5 year impact thing with gradual recovery over 2 yr period - shortage of pilots across all plane types as well as experienced resources to do the scheduling.

With blocked middle seats gone hopefully situation will be slightly better when memorial day weekend rolls around but sadly this will repeat again.
Once is misfortune, twice is embarrassment, thrice is incompetence but hey blocked seats look pretty and new food offerings are coming!

Why y’all worried about these flights and cancellations and airline-y stuff. Ed runs a social justice organization, not an airline. He could care less if you get there today, tomorrow or next week. I get it, these issues are potentially significant ones for our society, and are deserving of detailed thought and debate as to how to address them. But NOW is the 18 months that Ed chooses to focus on that INSTEAD of leading and running Delta? Someone needs to tell him that the idea of a self driving airline doesn’t exist.

Can’t believe I’m about to say this, but, bring Richard back.

I'm flying LGA to MIA tonight. I specifically chose DL because of the open middle seat policy and the late flight because it was showing very empty, so empty I was afraid it would be cancelled.
My flight is still going but they cancelled the afternoon LGA to MIA and middle seats on my flight are being filled. We'll see what happens tonight.

This has happened every holiday weekend for the past six months. Does Delta just not care about staffing correctly for predictably high volume days during this phase of the pandemic? They are making the conscious choice to understaff / run capacity too low on a consistent basis, I don't understand. I plan on booking around July 4, should I avoid Delta for this trip?

Ed's arrogance and over confidence in his abilities to run the airline is truly stunning!

Fighting a phantom crowd here? I don't see a single person on this thread defending Delta here.

It's completely unacceptable for them to be having this issue. I was willing to give Delta a mulligan for Thanksgiving/Christmas last year because of unprecedented circumstances and pilot retraining, but it's just not acceptable to be happening again. Fleet retirement decisions were mostly made 10 months ago and they've had time to retrain their pilots. There's no excuse to be running an overly hot schedule that they knew weeks ago they would not be able to fly. Pilot schedules don't fully resolve until about 3 weeks prior but they could have easily predicted this and at a minimum they should have been fixing this two weeks ago when they knew they couldn't fly these routes.

Removing the middle seat block is just not acceptable. They better be offering every passenger impacted by this meaningful compensation because most people in Y were paying extra to fly Delta because of the middle seat blocking. Lots of unvaccinated folks flying up to visit their vaccinated elderly family for the first time in more than a year. I'd be frustrated beyond belief if I paid extra and then had the middle seat block promise disregarded because of Delta's own operational incompetence.

What a disaster.

Agreed. One of the reasons many people had flown Delta was their operations and service recovery. It seems they have lost that edge. And, starting May 1st, there's little left to distinguish Delta as a choice.

Yes, I've been pretty happy with how Delta has responded to the pandemic overall except for these operational issues.

Pre-COVID Delta did extraordinary things to "get me home" that I never saw any other airline do (although United started getting better in '16-'19). Rescue flights galore, creative last minute plane swaps that took advantage of exceptionally strong jetstreams to avoid delays, mid-flight fresh crew pickups to avoid cancelling a flight due to timeouts... and to see Delta have a meltdown of its own making for the third time in six months is just incredibly disappointing - especially because there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I think that there is no "self preservation" concern at this point that would make them want to save a bit of cash at the expense of cancels.

I'll be very curious to see how good Delta is with reliability going forward. If the past 6 months are any indication I am very concerned.

He is a bean counter and, based on his memos - a wannabe politician
DL needs leadership of an operational guy like Richard was.

Still too many pilots who are unassigned which means their certifications and trainings are not current. Resource scheduling probably knew weeks in advance that the bookings they have are not sustainable with current resources but nothing moved. Prepare for more operational pain in coming weeks.

"We are expecting high call volume this weekend"
-Delta

I agree with some of this... when demand eventually comes back with a vengeance later this year, as early as this summer, DL will wish it still had the 777s and other aircraft it so rapidly retired. It will wish it had the experienced pilots that were encouraged to retire early.

The messaging was hilarious. I initiated a conversation at 10 p.m. last night. It kept checking in every 90 minutes to see if I still needed assistance...

Finally, at 4:30 a.m., it said that the messaging desk was closed for the night and asked if I still needed assistance. When I replied yes, it stated that the messaging desk will reopen at 6 a.m. and that I will be placed in that queue. Someone finally started replying to me around 7 a.m., and they were unhelpful and told me to call in. UGH.

P.S. Does the messaging prioritize Medallions like the phone lines supposedly do?

Aircraft aren't the issue here (other than the cascading retrainings retirements created). The only real capacity Delta is missing right now are the MD-90s - they were supposed to fly this summer and they're not. The 737-700s too, but that was such a tiny subfleet to be pretty irrelevant. Even if Delta kept the metal, the 777 fleet wouldn't be flying right now because they don't make sense to fly on domestic routes - and international long haul is still in life support mode for obvious reasons. . All the other fleet retirement "announcements" are paper only and can be changed if conditions warrant: no material number of 767s or 717s have actually been removed from the fleet.

The issue is the pilots. They need more people with the right certifications to fly the metal.

I am so glad I started the migration over to AF for ST needs 4 years ago - even more so over the last two weeks. Also glad I already got rid of that DL Amex Reserve card 2 years ago...

I imagine you'll see a ton of free agents this time next year unless they blanket extend again (notwithstanding their recent concessions).

Why, as a leisure traveler, you'd continue to subject yourself to the likes of this weekend would be beyond me - and even most elites are gonna need to hit leisure travel relatively hard in H2 to requalify under the new thresholds.

Just boarded a flight from LAS to LAX. Every seat in FC is full. Traveling by myself. Sitting next to someone.

Meanwhile, in the rear of the aircraft, it looks as if passengers are still sitting solo for the most part. Most C+ seats have empty seats next to passengers and hard to tell in the back half but at least most of the front half of coach is similar.

Checked the flight status of the rest of the flights from LAS to to LAX for all day today and tomorrow, none show as cancelled (but will check again at EOD). Flights operated by the connection carrier, and not main-line Delta so I would assume they don’t have the same pilot situation but maybe I’m wrong there.

99% of my interactions with Delta the last 14 years have been positive. Only had one major issue over the years (maybe I’m lucky that way). While I disagree with some of the other comments above, I do agree that one of the reasons I traveled this weekend and purchased FC was the expectation I would not be sitting next to someone...so much for that. Interesting to see how my second leg will be today out of LAX (also non main-line).

youre absolutely right... bad experiences are more likely on Delta, now and in the future . It’s why I’ve chosen United, even as a DM and DL 2MM!

I’d assume F is gong out full due to the GAs clearing more UGs at the gate to free up more room back in Y. While I’m not excusing DL for suddenly changing their written policy at the last min with no warning, to act like your “safer” back in C+ with middle seats blocked vs having a seat mate in F is nonsense. FC going out full in a 2-2 configuration has the same cabin density as C+ and Y with middle seats blocked. The seat blocking gimmick by DL has been safety theatre this entire time.

Not only has UA treated me well (as 1k), not canceled a single one of my flights (Delta=2), not been late (Delta=2), the UA FF program is LIGHT YEARS more awesome than DL. I'm heading to Turkey next week on TK, all F+J (TK's new 789) all the way to BJV, including positioning flights (3 legs total) for 154k UA miles +$50 r/t.

Plus UA connection choices are so much better for me on the west coast. Canceled all my Delta CC's months ago (2 per/2 biz). So sick of the GD business politics, get me to my destination, offer me a decent lounge (as a high-spending flyer) and GTFO of my politics and personal choices!