beachmouse

Same goes for FAs. The perfesser knows a woman who got hired on as a FA last year who got stuck with NYC as her first base and she’s scrambling to move to ATL so it’s only a 45 minute commute to home and husband. (She’s in her late 50s and not really interested in living in a party town. She probably got hired because she’s bilingual and has both USA and German passports)

Duke787

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Have you looked at international routes recently and how much it costs for coach???

It’s like $2k for a coach ticket

DenverBrian

Cry me a river. Not a single aircraft was destroyed. Not a single physical asset disappeared. The reservation system is exactly the same as it was on January 1, 2020. If there was a "brain drain," it was one of their own making.

If DL needs to cancel flights, then for the love of God, do it with a week's notice so pax can figure out options. Not with an hour to go before the flight is supposed to take off.

steveholt

Well, it depends, right? I won't argue that it's cheaper to live in ATL or DTW than NYC. But if a pilot wants to live in midtown Manhattan and then commute to JFK/LGA just get to the airport, that's not going to make a lot of sense. It would be more logical for them to live in Queens, where the cost of living (while more than ATL or DTW suburbs) are much more reasonable.

Lux Flyer

I mean thats literally what this thread is about. how they're proactively trimming the schedule by 100 flights 2 months out (when the schedule would have usually been long finalized by this point). Unfortunately this memo "leaked" at the same time as a weather waiver, for a very real weather event occurring in the days leading up to memorial day weekend, so everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. DL was not unique in issuing waivers covering the weekend, and the FAA has been saying daily since Tuesday in their system briefings to expect GDP, GS and reroutes through the areas as this weather system passes through.

Airlines are an immense operation, and I'm not sure you fully understand the scale if you're simplifying their operational woes to "not a single aircraft being destroyed" and the "reservation system is exactly the same". Aircraft are usually being run daily, not parking for months at a time. When you park an aircraft for months, it takes labor to demobilize it, and when you want to resume flying it, it takes labor to remobilize it. Delta employes ~75k people, 18k took buyouts or early retirement. Thats almost 25% of their workforce that turned over in under a year. Name me a single company that can trim their workforce by that much over that time period, and have a normal operation 1.5 years later supporting the level they were running at prior to losing that 25%. It takes time to rebuild from that, especially when most 4-6 week training classes can only hold a max of around 20 people, plus the issues with finding labor in the first place.

DenverBrian

Just as the other majors did. But DL's cancellation rate is significantly higher than the others. You can be a DL apologist all you want, but we customers will continue to demand a certain standard that at least matches the mediocre standards of the major airlines.

DLASflyer

Higher today but AA, UA, WN, B6 and AS have all had similar meltdows in the last year. What I find fascinating is Delta cut the most capacity of any of them but still ended up with the same problem, albeit later than the others. What I’d like to hear is whether this is at its core a staffing problem or a training problem. One of those can be fixed much faster than the other.

StayingHomeIsBetter

Or, $6000 coach seats to PVG, that used to be $600.

jjl468

ATCR data from the US DOT directly contradict your claims: https://www.transportation.gov/sites...022%20ATCR.pdf.

On page 8, you can see the statistics for overall on-time arrival percentage, where Delta is ranked in second place for the year and third place for March (the most recent month in the report), beating both American and United. Furthermore, page 28 lists the percentage of total cancellations for each airline, where Delta ranks second-best for March, losing only to Hawaiian. Page 29 shows YTD cancellation data for 2022, where Delta retains its spot in second behind Hawaiian. Finally, page 58 and 59 shows the number of consumer complaints made for each airline, where Delta again beats American and United.

Granted, this data is slightly dated as a lot has changed in the last couple of months, but all official data currently available points to Delta having the best operations between the major legacy carriers.

Justin026

It is cheeky for Delta to call this “rebuilding an airline” when in fact it is just a chaotic dismantling of their COVID-diminished schedules. I thought they were proud to have the best-running airline just a few months ago.

How about starting instead with an apology to the customers for bungling their ramp-up from COViD? If they are too arrogant about “changing schedules” when it could be perceived as an attempt to gradually squeeze people off the planes by cancelling trips … and then reselling the more limited space to others at higher fares, then we could see the politicians taking interest. Especially if this looks like…umm… coordinated action by several airlines.

SOBE ER DOC

I don't buy this for a hot second. Mainline pilots for DL earn six-figure incomes. There are MILLIONS of people living in the tri-state area on incomes less than what the pilots make. Do thay make enough to live in Manhattan? Probably not, but there are plenty of communities proximate to JFK and LGA where they can afford to live.

To be brutally honest, there is no surprise about what pilots earn. They, like the rest of us, have a choice to make that balances income expectations with cost of living with geographic desirability with family obligations. We all make these decisions and we are not victims.

SOBE ER DOC

This statement is flat out wrong. EVERY major US airline has had operational meltdowns post-COVID due to staffing. You think it's bad on DL? Haul yourself over to AA where it had been an operational disaster more often than not. DCA totally melted down on Monday due to weather and AA was telling folks it could take 3 - 4 days to get them home.

I don't think anyone is being a DL apologist by pointing out every company is struggling with labor issues right now. I am not pleased with DL post-COVID for a number of reasons, but none of them have anything to do with their inability to maintain a schedule. There's a lot of people sitting on this thread thinking the grass is greener over at AA, UA and WN. I'm here to tell you it's not that green over here...at least on AA and UA, which I fly regularly.

DLASflyer

Up until a few weeks ago meltdowns were met with automatic compensation. Delta seems to have realized all US airlines are a mess and there's no need to hand out miles.

DLASflyer

The latest data from A4A show even before the coming cuts Delta slashed twice as many seats as its competitors compared to 2019. Ed bet against a recovery and he was very, very wrong.

obscure2k

I have spent the last hour deleting off--topic posts. I see no reason to keep this thread open.
Enjoy your weekend
Obscure2k
Delta Moderator