rjburns

I live in the DC area and IAD is my closest airport. Diversions between DCA and IAD happened fairly frequently. No compensation or taxi voucher is generally offered. They are considered “ co- terminals” when it’s convenient for the airlines.

want to change your flight voluntarily from one airport to the other? Miraculously, they are no longer co- terminals.

wb2020

I don't think this is specific to Delta or BA or the airline industry in general. From my experience since the start of the pandemic, service in all industries has fallen precipitously whether it be restaurants, retail, airlines, whatever. At this point, I have zero expectations with regards to customer service or competent operations anywhere these days. That said, I feel for folks in any sort of service role at this moment because they are likely facing a storm negativity that they most likely are not directly responsible for.

Adam1222

A bit of it is Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Customers have unrealistic expectations and rant and attack when there are minor inconveniences, things out of an airlines control, or circumstances based on customer error. It makes CS staff and others less interested in helping ranting customers when the airline has actually done something wrong.

wb2020

Agreed - That's probably forced a lot good workers in customer service positions to pursue less stressful careers. Growing up, my family owned a restaurant and although dealing with customer expectations at scale has never been the easiest of tasks, the balance was always significantly more positive than negative which made it manageable. With the way social media has dehumanized social interactions and based on the behavior I've seen from customers recently, I would not want any part of a front-line customer-facing role.

jsn55

I'm glad to read this, I become weary of people who have no cognizance of reality posting ridiculous opinions and slamming people they know nothing about. The world we know has never before gone through a disaster like this virus. The overreaction by the politicians and bureaucrats could have brought our economy to a standstill. As it is, our economy is severely crippled, but it's still alive. Nobody seems to know why 'all the travel providers' cannot restaff to former levels ... I suspect it has something to do with revenue, yes? To expect everything to be instantly back to normal when we're still forced to wear a mask on a flight is juvenile and short-sighted. Try to have a grasp of reality, people. If an airplane windshield cracks, it must be fixed. There may or may not be anyone to fix it, someone has to figure out where to divert the flight. If the weather is awful, better to divert than fly through dangerous storms, yes? There's no problem with complaining, but to expect 'business as usual' after two years of hell with the virus is juvenile. I have tremendous empathy for anyone who is still working in the travel world. Ignorantly tossing out sarcastic remarks about how a company is managed is worse than useless. FlyerTalk is a very well-read site; think about the people reading your idiotic remarks and try to give those remarks a dose of reality once in a while.

wb2020

Very well stated jsn55 . I understand why some folks are frustrated as service levels are nowhere near where they once were - It frustrates me at times as well. But getting things back to where they were after many companies made massive cuts in order to service months/years of revenue loss and talented workers having (or choosing) to seek new careers in order to survive is not going to happen in a short period of time. I've just let go of expectations because things are just different right now. In fact they will never be the same again but service and operational quality will certainly improve in time barring another major global setback. I will say that several recent experiences on Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways, DOH and DXB airport staff, Le Meridien Maldives, Element Al Jaddaf Dubai (stellar service), and British Airways Exec Club support representatives have been really exceptional. Maybe I've just been lucky of late, but there are a lot of positive data points out there if we're paying attention.

Adam1222

If you're the kind of person who responds to a cracked windshield and tornados and thunderstorms by saying the CEO should be fired, I feel like you're never going to get service you think is "stellar"

STARAFlyingPenguins

I don't necessarily disagree but i do think part of all the current issues are due to things within managements power. The airlines and politicians sold the bailouts as "it'll keep the airlines ready to fly" which, granted they are still flying, isn't what happened. They should have managed expectations of the public there. And staffing shortages of FAs and pilots where also predictable. People have been warning about those for decades.

I'm not saying Ed Bastian is responsible for a broken windshield or thunderstorm but there were some things he and Anderson could have predicted and prevented. That doesn't mean he should be fired, specially considering most airlines are in the same spot right now.

SchindHaughton

I agree that our current issues with staffing, to a degree, were foreseeable- in the airline industry and elsewhere. However, I’m not sure who isn’t struggling with staffing right now (in any industry), so I’m not sure how much I can blame airline leaders.

BenA

Wading into this one against my better judgment.

The complaints I’ve had recently aren’t about things going wrong - that always happened. It’s about how Delta responds that’s gotten worse.

Getting in touch with customer service in a timely manner right now is nigh-on impossible, even as a top tier elite, and when you do get through it’s not actually exaggeration to say the person who you are talking to could be so junior they have spent fewer hours working for Delta than you have spent flying them. This is probably the #1 pain point right now. I’m confident good people are working on the problem, but I’m seeing little to no improvement yet as an outsider.

Management of and response to IROPS situations has gotten much worse - in some cases, comedically bad. I’ve experienced two 3+ hour delays this year. One was due to a MX issue, and they faffed around for 90 minutes trying to defer the issue before they even started to try to fix it. The other was a crew availability issue, which I experienced as a rolling delay even though they knew internally it would be three hours due to the assignment they had made; I could have gotten to my destination sooner if they declared the true extent of the delay soon enough for me to rebook on an OAL flight. I also experienced two baggage mishandling incidents directly attributable to understaffing at SEA.

These kinds of things were far less common before the pandemic, and I think there should be accountability for them.

I fully acknowledge the metrics show Delta is still eking out a win over other airlines, but it is a level of service that is far below what they should aspire to or what I have come to expect when I pay more than the competition for the privilege of flying DL. And I think it’s entirely reasonable to talk about the issue, share experiences, and discuss whether the current situation is acceptable enough for executives to be celebrating their performance in investor relations calls just because other airlines are failing too… or whether they should be starting an internal moonshot to return the company to its previous operational excellence.

So no, it’s not that windshields break that’s the problem. It’s that whoever was booked on that aircraft next probably had to sit on hold for hours and/or experienced a multiple hour rolling delay and/or had their bags lost as a result.

Billy Mumphrey

I agree on the customer service point. Phone times are much better than a year ago, but still too long. And the bigger issue is how little experience most agents have once you get through. You inevitably end up waiting on hold even longer while they check with a supervisor on doing something they should be able to do right away.

But I still think Delta has handled IROPS well, at least in this most recent experience. On Thursday they could have easily just cancelled our flight once it was clear the SLC-DCA flight was going to be severely delayed. DCA is an outstation, so there aren't any extra 757s just sitting around. But they flew up an empty 757 from ATL with no passengers, and a crew assembled on very short notice, in order not to strand 200 people at DCA that night. And under the threat of thunderstorms in the area (which ended up grounding all air traffic shortly after we left DCA, and which diverted the SLC-DCA flight a second and third time). We were 3 hours late, and everyone with a connection in SLC missed their connection, but I applaud them for completing the flight when the easiest solution would have been just to cancel.