exwannabe

For well over a decade DL has charged premium prices and I think most DL fliers saw the value. Better ops. Better recovery. Better service.

Then Covid. OK. S*** happens and hard to blame any airline on how they handled it.

But we are now stable. If DL wants to keep charging a premium they need to get back to where they were pre-COVID (at least relative to other domestics).

Milking the established customers with high prices and poor service will fail. It will take a year or two, but is certain.

SUPERTRAVEL

Seems like in most of my price searches, Delta is only surpassed by Southwest. (Not including Frontier & Spirit.)

FabCW

I don’t think it’s fair to write that “we are now stable.” Have you read/watched the news in the past two weeks?

emma dog

Not from Atlanta. Prices on DL from ATL have always been routinely more expensive than the other airlines. That margin seems to be bigger these days, but my single date search below isn't bearing this out as I thought it would:

For some comparison, I checked Jan 25-28 since it's roughly 4 weeks away.
ATL-ORD - DL, AA, and UA are the same price
ATL-SFO AA is $281 with 1 stop. UA is $303 with 1 stop. DL is $480.
ATL-SEA: UA is $286, AA is $299, and DL and AS are $307
ATL-BOS: DL is $147, AA is $148, and B6 is $168.
ATL-PHX: AA is $284 with terrible flight times... AA is $315 with a more normal routing. DL is $315 nonstop.

So.... I'm sure there are other dates and times with greater discrepancies, but at least on this one date, things seem relatively comparable.

Mr. Tickets

Yes, I would like to know which world the OP is living in!

sydneyracquelle

Based out of ATL I usually compare DL and WN for nonstop domestic prices. I avoid the ultra-low-cost carriers and only consider AA and UA for nonstops. Oftentimes WN is far cheaper than DL. I just booked a nonstop flight from MSY>AUS on WN and DL with a connection was more than triple the price.

Cthunder86

Flights from detroit are routinely 25-30% more for both international/domestic. Flights to Asia were unrealistic in my opinion pre covid. 700-900 for economy from ORD on superior airlines vs 1400-1800 on delta for the average flyer. I’m surprised more people don’t just drive or fly to Chicago.

BUT I know convenience plays a major factor

Centurion

Things are far from back to normal. Staffing shortage and you want Delta to up their service ? Haha just be happy to get from point a to b

Lomapaseo

you left out the conditional "if" in your quote

Since you say things are far from back to normal, (service) then it infers that Delta needs to drop their prices to remain competitive

troyintn

They may have staffing shortages, but that was a self-induced problem. I can tell you I will make DM end of Febuary or March depends on Covid with international travel, I Just need MQDs with 600K MQMs rolling over. I will be trying AA a lot this year, unsure if it is better or not, but the current DL experience doesn't warrant me giving them 250K MQMs and 75K MQDs blindly.

LexVegas

With that type of spend are you Delta 360? If not, you could try either UA or AA. You would virtually be assured Global Services or Concierge Key respectively, and those statuses do offer superior service.

emma dog

For grins because all Christmas gifts are open:
For some comparison, I checked Jan 25-28 since it's roughly 4 weeks away. WN is listed as WN (#stops) Price. WGA fares are displayed. I selected the most reasonable WN flights (daylight hours, shorter flight durations when the fares were close) Delta are all nonstops. Delta is listed as $Basic/$Main
ATL-MDW WN (0) $171. DL: $127/$177
ATL-SFO WN (1) $344. DL: $497/517 **WN flights are 9-12 hour duration. DL is 5 1/2.
ATL-SEA: WN (1) $325. DL $307/357 **WN flights are 8-13 hour duration. DL is 5:45
ATL-BOS:WN (1) 146. DL $147/$197 **WN flight times are for 4:30-8 hour durations. DL total flight times are 3:15-ish.
ATL-PHX: WN (0) $316. DL $315/365.

Here's my takeaway for this one set of arbitrary dates:
-DL Basic Economy fares tend to be priced on-par with WN flights. There are times when they're cheaper by a wide margin (ATL-MDW).
-There are times when DL is less competitive price-wise, but the flight duration or times make DL flights more attractive (ATL-SFO)
-There are other times where the comparison with WN doesn't make sense (why is ATL-SEA not priced similar to ATL-SFO?). However, other factors play a role (AS charges $307 on this route).

Again, this is totally arbitrary and on one set of dates selected arbitrarily because they're a month out. I'm certain we can find examples of these rules of thumb not being "true". I'm surprised by the results because I, too, believed DL took severe advantage of its dominance in ATL.

xliioper

You will find instances of dominant hub operators taking advantage of their position from other hubs as well, so checking out of ATL (as a dominant DL hub), is not exactly representative. You also want to look at pricing from competitor hubs to get a fairer picture. As a nit, there are cheaper roundtrip fares on ATL-SFO on DL (from $399), but your 1/25-1/28 trip does not meet the min stay requirements for those fares.

inet32

This must be an entirely new use of the word "stable" with which I was previously unfamiliar.
. . .
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/26/omic...bove-1500.html

Seat 1F

Things are far from stable or back to normal now...Omicron has shown us that. Having said that, I do think the Big 3 need to see 2022 as a time to repair on-board service...particularly catering in all cabins. This of course is subject to things settling down on the COVID front. If we can get through/past Omicron in January and it isn't followed by another worse variant, maybe we can start to see some more on-board improvements in the second quarter of 2022. I truly hope this can be the case. I've flown both DL and AA domestically in the last 3-4 months and the food offered in the F cabin on both is very sub-standard. I don't see either one of the carriers being better than the other.