cmd320

Well, while DL has undoubted changed a lot since 2004, at the moment they're scraping the bottom of the barrel so I wouldn't use this as the time to give that another try. With that said, they are currently blocking all middle seats in Y and adjacent seats in F for the time being, if that's something important to you.

To offer better feedback, it would be useful to know more about your travel habits rather than your reasons for not wanting to stay with UA. For example, are you primarily buying Y or J/F tickets? Do you travel all over or stick to certain routes/regions? All domestic? All international? More of one or the other? That kind of information is all highly relevant to the utility of one FFP over another.

lincolnjkc

In graphical form (mostly complete since early 2000: https://my.flightradar24.com/lincolnjkc

Business travel is almost entirely domestic, frequently up front. Very irregular -- with the exception of LA and Richmond it's rare that I wind up in the same place more than once or twice a year, sometime with years between visiting the same airport. Even on the international side, while much less frequent, YVR and YYZ are my only real repeats. With two exceptions my known travel for the rest of this year are all places I've either never been before or haven't been in the past 3 years.

Until this year, leisure travel has been mostly international (1-2x/year) save for a couple west coast family visits (LAX, PDX); ticketed in Y upgraded using GPUs with about a 75% success rate. With the wife starting a new job just before the pandemic started there's a bit more consistency in CLE-(IAD,DCA), but no real data in how that will be long term (our original plan for managing being dual-homed went out the window with COVID)

beachmouse

My 2004 DL experience involved far too much ASA (Satan's Commuter airline). And then they had their share of merger-related issues early on but seemed to really get their act together somewhere around 2016. While their current cabin service levels are less than ideal, they've got it together from an operations standpoint and give customer-facing employees a good amount of power to fix problems and those employees generally use that power for good.

nomad420

Totally understand what you are saying and have definitely experienced the same now. After months of Covid most the employees in the UCs I frequent are ether gone, reassigned, or retired. Many of the airport clubs and restraints/bars are either still closed or running with different staff for much the same reasons. When I was mega traveling I typically hit the same cities at the same time and hence over the months and years did develop and relationship with many airline and airport employees. Years back I basically commuted in and out of SEA and PHX, I was in at 8am and out on the 7pm flight a couple times a week, so I got to know much of the staff. Sadly now, for the most part, they are gone/moved on.

1P

This.

Your stubborn resolve never to fly DL is cutting off your own nose to spite your face. Of the Big Three, DL is probably the best, even in the midst of the pandemc.

Having said that, I too will be flying as a free agent in the future, basing my decisions on price, convenience of schedule, and availability of space at the front of the bus. .

nomad420

To stay on topic I was prior GS now 1K with UA. At the end of last year moved my "allegiance" to AS as they did offer me a better product at a better price for MY travel needs. Well since the Covid shut down I became a bit of a "free agent" and have migrated back to UA mainly because AS has dramatically slashed its schedule. They no fly to some of the location that I need to travel or have severely limited flights into certain regions, Hawaii being one example. Given UA size I still seem to be able to get where I need to be at the time needed. While it may not be as facile as before (ie. connecting instead or direct) they (UA) seems to be working for me a bit better.

pinniped

I had terrible experiences with DL in the early 00's, and they're still the airline and alliance I've flown the least of all the majors, primarily because I've never worked in any of their hub cities whereas I have spent years working in Denver, Dallas, Chicago, and DC.

But I agree - these things are cyclical as airlines change leadership and refresh fleets. For the past 3-4 years, DL seems to have it going on while AA and UA seem lost in the desert.

If their schedule makes sense for you now, they're worth a try. Whatever happened in 2004 will have no bearing on what your experience will be like now.

Kacee

If that refers to onboard food and beverage service, many of us don't care at all right now. I'd be absolutely fine if airlines provided nothing on flights under four or five hours. Just provides an excuse for passengers to leave their masks off the entire flight.

I'm Silver on DL and 1K on UA and I will choose DL every single time right now.

lincolnjkc

I'm on the other end of the spectrum -- the pathetic onboard service pretty high (my home UC being closed slightly higher) in raking of reasons I'm contemplating trying other options.

(with one exception I've seen very high mask compliance, e.g. take it off, take a bite and a drink, put it back on)

cmd320

While it's great that works for you, I would say the vast majority of premium flyers would consider DL's current onboard product the worst of the available premium products, even in the US.

nomad420

For "premium flyers" UA is a pretty low hurdle to beat currently.

cmd320

I don't disagree, and same can be said for AA. But at least on these two you can get a ginger ale or maybe some ice for your water.

pinniped

Isn't it bad across the board right now?

If you go back one year to pre-covid service standards, was DL seen as substantially behind UA and AA in terms of J/F product?

Hard to predict what each carrier will do as service reaches some sort of "new normal" in 2021 but I'm going to guess that none of them are going to vastly outperform the other two in terms of onboard service for at least another one or two years, if then.

Kacee

Do you have any data to support your personal preference?

Personally, I find there's more to "onboard product" than the ability to stuff my face with free liquor and processed food. Not contracting a potentially fatal illness currently being the number one consideration.

cmd320

It's definitely bad everywhere right now, but DL is by far the worst. At least on AA and UA you get some semblance of actual food whereas on DL you get a snack box from Y and no liquor or soft drinks of any kind.

As for what will happen moving forward, I'm not really sure and I guess it would be a good thing to monitor if you're looking at switching airlines at the moment.