I know you're a seemingly die-hard B6 enthusiast, and of course chacun a son gout, but every airline has its own way of making money. Delta has a very long (decades-long) history of good employee relations and solid customer service that has only gotten better over time. So, they are very profitable due to their hubs, as well? That doesn't mean it's an unfair advantage, they had to plan things to get to that profitability. But the main point is profitability, good customer service, and strong employee relations aren't mutually exclusive. Somehow United and AA manage to have lower customer satisfaction, more labor strife, AND lower profit margin, all at the same time.

Sure, maybe Delta is going to implode at the next recession -- but they have a very long track record and they've managed to maintain and even improve in their labor relations and customer satisfaction though bad times and good. That to me speaks of a longer term commitment to better management.

I just don't see that in B6. They just seem to be sliding backwards, and trying to boost profitability by various cutbacks. I don't think that's a winning long-term solution.

JetBlue announced today that crewmembers would all get a $500 bonus (before taxes). Great way to shut [some of] them up after all the news about Delta. I can't imagine being an 18-year crewmember and seeing someone who's been there 6 months get the same amount as you... :o

-J.

Haha -- $500 vs 2 months pay?

Yup. But they're offsetting their emissions!!!

Have you started flying Delta yet? I take my first Alaska Airlines flight next weekend.

-J.

Unfortunately I've still got one JetBlue round trip business flight I booked before I made the fateful decision to switch. But as I said way above my wife and son and I took an international trip on Delta to Paris last month on the same plane I would be taking to JFK every month, so I already got a taste of that plane, plus a previously booked Delta short haul flight to Seattle which was very nice in Comfort+. My Main Cabin seat to Paris was definitely not as roomy as the JetBlue, however, but it was manageable. But this is why I have now concocted an elaborate scheme to attain Platinum Medallion status by the end of 2020, using a combination of the Delta Reserve card, all the remaining business trips this year, and paying my property tax bills on the card :), plus maybe one or two short-haul flights. So, maybe a year of slightly cramped seats until I can get Comfort+ at the time of booking (since I usually book a couple months ahead, Delta loyalists have said with Platinum status I should be able to snag Comfort+ for free nearly all the time on my business trips).

Also got to use the SkyClub in SFO before our Paris trip. Really nice actually.

The cynic in me thinks DL's bonuses have more to do with trying to fight unionization efforts than anything else.

Don't get me wrong, I think DL is a very well run airline -- possibly the best in the US today. I'd have no hesitation flying them if their offerings fit my needs. But I don't think this is the best way to measure that success.

It's not an either/or sort of thing. It's not as though Delta is doing this because they're saints. The point I would make is it is good business to treat employees well. It leads to better business outcomes. Delta has been giving out profit sharing for years, this isn't a one time thing -- it just made headlines because it is one of the largest profit sharing payouts they've done. But they've given out >$1 billion profit sharing bonuses for the last five years. Sure, giving employees less reason to feel they have to unionize to get a decent contract may well be a motivation, but if so, that's as it should be. Which is not to say Delta has been exemplary in every way -- no company is. But the point is, they seem to believe that putting effort into employee relations and customer service is the profitable thing to do. And that general attitude is something I really approve of.

As I said, I very rarely fly JetBlue these days because they don't fit my flight needs. I don't fly delta because it's a huge danger in NYC if delta takes an even larger market share than they do now. I would hate to see NYC start having as high fares as Detroit or Minneapolis. they also have a pathetic asian network that simply doesn't work for me. But I do see a very important need for a healthy JetBlue to be around in NYC to keep the fares down. So I will defend them even if others do not.

As for why delta is more successful than ua and aa. A lot of that is due to their merger happening at an earlier stage than the other two. So they are reaping the benefits of that a lot sooner than the other two majors. And also it helps that delta faces no competition in Detroit and Minneapolis whereas most other legacy hubs do face more competition from the same city or nearby.

Have JetBlue degraded their product in the past two years? I would say they have. But their hard product for me is still far ahead of everyone else. Even so, I do see their product turning around with the new aircraft coming in. We will see, their leadership is hell bent on achieving that eps goal they told wall street.

The point is you can afford to pay more if you are doing better financially. Delta has been doing more profit sharing because it makes more money. Not every company has that luxury. And it helps them from unionization.

You're making the argument that Delta is good to its employees because it is profitable; I'm saying part of the reason it's profitable is it is good to its employees (and customers). Obviously we could argue correlation vs causation all day and not come up with a definitive conclusion. But I think there is ample evidence that profitability and quality can be positively correlated and I personally think this is not an accident. Southwest is also consistently profitable and also has high customer satisfaction ratings. For very different reasons than Delta, but it works for them as well.

You're worried about market share and I'm worried about rewarding bad behavior. When I see poor customer service and bad attitude, I want to take my dollars elsewhere. That's my economic choice, and my own reason for wanting to favor the companies that do better in this regard. I used to favor JetBlue for those same reasons, but not anymore.

JetBlue didn't have any sort of profit sharing in 2019 because profits were down, and because they paid into a retirement fund (which is an employee benefit).

The email also said that profits were down. In 2016, for every $100 in revenue, $18 of it was profit. in 2019, only $9.50 of every $100 in revenue was profit. Compared to Delta, where $13 of every $100 in revenue was profit, and Southwest, where (they expected) $14 of every $100 in revenue is profit, all in 2019.

They were able to "afford" the $500 profit sharing payout because they cut their costs aggressively and exceeded their cost control goal.

Source: Internal company email

In terms of carbon emissions, I'm getting bit tired of companies using this as a PR play. Notice how all of the usual travel bloggers were fawning over this last week yet made no mention whatsoever of B6 cutting back on the Customer Bill of Rights which in my opinion should have been the bigger story. I also have yet to see a blogger mention the lack of Mosaic welcome kits this year. Again, a bigger story as part of the bigger picture. I miss the days when there were actual objective journalists covering this space. Clearly, JetBlue is either trying to make an acquisition or get sold hence the continued cost cuts. Anyway, I digress. If you really are concerned about carbon emissions, do something about it yourself. Cut your overall flying, combine 2 trips into 1, fly nonstop as much as possible, take the train on shorter trips etc. There are ways you can make a personal difference without falling into the PR trap.

My plans for this year are to earn Mosaic for 2021 for London inaugural, maintain my WN status match for the full year, and to try to earn Delta Silver for 2021 after I've earned Mosaic. Next year, I'll go for Delta Diamond. And if anyone from B6 is reading this thread and I'm pretty sure they are, you should be absolutely disgusted at how many Mosaics are noticing the decline in customer service and employee morale. If your most loyal customers are jumping ship in multitude, there is a very big problem with your company. Good luck staying profitable when we are all gone next year.

Not sure if you are referring to customer satisfaction or employee happiness when it comes to bottom line. For the former, JetBlue won the jd power award again last year and also has higher nps than competitors. I think the complaint has been JetBlue not doing enough for mosaic members. I don't have any measurement for satisfaction of ff among airlines. I do think it's a very valid area that JetBlue should address.

Given their operational numbers actually improved in 2019, I don't see that customer satisfaction going down next year. I could be wrong, but I think the reconfig and a220 will help both as we go forward.

When it comes to JetBlue, you are always dealing with soft product deficiencies vs hard product excellence. They have easily the best domestic hard product with virgin America no longer existing. Each person will judge which matters more.

But if I am going to sit through a year of legacy coach seating to get lower tier status, I would pick one that has slight chance of getting free upgrades. For me in NYC, that was aa.

And frankly, I would pick coach on mint over y+ on a legacy 737. But that's me.

The complaint isn't about satisfaction. The complaint is about how the crews are cold and robotic. There's no sense of warmth or pride. When I fly any large US mainline carrier or their express partners, I get a feeling of warmth just from how the FAs make announcements. JetBlue flight attendants sound like they didn't want to get up out of bed in the morning just to get on a plane and recite a memorized script.

I've been a B6 flyer since the beginning; I even did the October 2009 all you can jet promotion - now that was a fun month of flying all over the country. I even ended up going to one city twice. What I see is a decline in the soft product which is going to have a delayed impact on customer satisfaction. Most people are still going to report positive satisfaction because of the hard product plus memories of the way things used to be. I had stopped flying B6 regularly when I moved out of NYC but just started flying it again a lot this past year for work, and that’s when, perhaps through bad luck, I ran into a series of issues which I mentioned in my original post. The problem for me is not the specific issues but what it says about the attitude of management.

Basically it comes down to whether or not management thinks the way to get profitable is by nickel and diming both customers and employees, or is it by being efficient yet realizing that, as the famous quality control expert W Edwards Deming used to say: price is not cost - that is to say, sometimes being cheap can be much more expensive in the long run. The former attitude results in long-term gradual decline; the latter attitude is the way to sustainable success.

I'm reminded of this famous Deming story I read when I was much younger. He was called to this textile factory to advise them about how to improve productivity. A few months earlier, productivity had dropped but they couldn't figure out why. They had put up signs on the factory floor exhorting the seamstresses to work harder. It hadn't worked. He asked them; have you actually spoken with the seamstresses about why their productivity dropped? They said: er, no.

He went to the floor and asked the seamstresses if anything had changed a few months before. Yes, they said, for the last few months they had to deal with rethreading their machines a lot more frequently because the thread kept breaking. So, Deming went to the purchasing department and asked them if anything had changed a few months earlier: they said yes, management had come through demanding cost cutting so they switched from the ten cent thread to the nine cent thread.

Cost is not the price tag: this is something better managers understand. That’s why I’m switching, and why I’m willing to suffer for a year to get Platinum Medallion. For my purposes, since I buy my flights a couple months ahead, I think I've got a decent shot at Comfort+ at booking so I don't need to rely on upgrades closer to departure. But even if it weren’t for that, I would still switch.