During the past 12 months, the 80,000 professional men and women at Delta have worked diligently on your behalf to provide a safe, reliable, convenient and friendly travel experience. In 2012, Delta turned out the best performance in the history of the airline, including a 78 percent improvement in completed flights, a 5 percent improvement in on-time arrivals and a 27 percent improvement in baggage handling. Our team’s dedication to running a reliable operation also meant more opportunities to exceed your expectations, which resulted in a 37 percent reduction in customer complaints.
We have your back, and we intend to make 2013 even better for you.
While safety and reliability are what you expect from Delta, we believe you also deserve a comfortable, convenient and friendly travel experience – one that allows you to maximize your time on the ground and in the air.
We continue to invest in technology that allows you to connect with us in the manner you prefer. This $120 million investment includes the first phase of a new delta.com website that will simplify your journey and give you greater control of your travel experience. We continue to improve the speed of our kiosks, allowing you to check in an average of 18 seconds faster, and we’re adding more of our popular recharging stations at top airports to make it easier for you to stay connected.
By summer we will complete our largest project – renovating and expanding Terminal 4 at New York’s JFK International Airport to create a world-class facility fitting for the world’s largest travel market.
No other US airline is investing as much as Delta in facilities and improvements on the ground. We’re not stopping there.
By the end of this year, full flat-bed seats with direct aisle access will be the standard for our BusinessElite cabin onboard all of our widebody international aircraft. New and expanded cuisine, amenities and in-flight entertainment will allow to you relax and feel refreshed upon landing. If your travel requires a greater level of productivity, we hope you will take advantage of onboard Wi-Fi or streaming content. We’re pleased to be the largest provider of in-flight Wi-Fi in the world and look forward to expanding further by offering Wi-Fi access aboard international flights beginning in 2013.
If you love the look and feel of new aircraft and the smell of new leather, you’ll be pleased to experience beginning in the third quarter two aircraft types that are new to Delta’s fleet – the Boeing 737-900 and Boeing 717. These aircraft are part of our strategy to fly larger, more fuel efficient planes while reducing smaller regional jets. These new aircraft offer more first class seats for our premium customers and help us conserve fuel and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
We have a busy but exciting year ahead of us as we continue to improve our products and services to meet your travel needs. The on-board product – seats, aircraft, in-flight entertainment – are an important part of the experience we provide to you. Equally as important is the opportunity to make your journey that much better through the gracious service of Delta people worldwide.
We look forward to continuing to build a better airline for you.
Thanks for flying with us.
Richard Anderson
December 29th, 2012 at 12:54 pm
These on-the-ground and in-the-air improvements are nice and make Delta a leading US airline for the travel experience.
It is no surprise that there is no mention of SkyMiles. The issues are well known among Delta flyers and well publicized in the media as a laughingstock among US airline loyalty programs, overwhelming the positive aspects such as rollover miles and Sky Club membership for Diamond Medallions. The major deficits compared to competitors include terrible online booking engine, prices multiples of competitors, one-way awards price as roundtrip, 72-hour no cancellation/changes, SkyTeam partner availability restrictions and blackouts, extremely restrictive upgrade certificates, etc.
My wife and I are both Diamond Medallions, this is our #1 concern and reason why we are losing patience and looking to move our business to a competitor. Typically, our Christmas trip is an award on American Airlines because Delta was from 3-5 times the price for every city/date/flight option we tried.
We hear the same from every top-tier Delta Medallion we encounter.
Even lip-service from Delta on the SkyMiles issues would be an improvement.
January 9th, 2013 at 10:22 am
I would like to preface this post by saying that I have been a loyal Delta customer for over 30 years. I am a Million Miler, a Flying Colonel, and a lifetime Silver Medallion.
I too echo the comments of krasowss in terms of giving you kudos for the work that has been done and is being done to improve the flying experience. I love Delta, and I only fly Delta, even though my business responsibilities have changed and business travel is no longer a frequent event for me. However, any flight I do book (and all members of my family and extended family) are all exclusively on Delta.
It bothers me when I read in various blogs that, despite claims to the contrary, Delta makes it so difficult to redeem mileage for award travel. I am certain you are well-aware of the cumbersome and completely ineffective award calendar. In all surveys, Delta comes in dead last in terms of ability to obtain desired itineraries using award tickets. Why is it so dfifficult for Delta to make more seats available for award travel? Don’t you want to reward those that have, through their loyalty to Delta, earned the right to at least get some choice when it comes to obtaining an award ticket? It’s pretty sad when you check the award calendar (again, always a negative experience) 11 months out as soon as a travel day comes in range, only to find there are no award seats to choose from. At one point a couple of years ago, Delta claimed that it made more seats avaialble than competitors for last mintue travel, but even that seems to now be a joke. I don’t know about most travelerss, but I don’t have the flexibility to suddenly plan a trip to Europe 3 days before a departure date when seats suddently become available.
Also, please reconsider your policy to award lifetime Silver status to Million Milers. United gives Gold status to its Million Milers, and as the Silver program becomes less and less attractive and beneficial, it would be great if Delta could reward its long-term loyalists by providing Million Milers with Gold status.
I can’t help but think what C. E. Woolman would think about this disconnect between loyalty and reward.
Congratualtions on all of your endeavors to make Delta the worldwide airline of choice. Now if you could just make it easier to reward your most loyal customers with better award availabitity and more appropriate recognition of Million Milers, those loyal customers will find it easier to enjoy all of these improvements you are initiating.
Thanks for taking the time to consider this.
January 17th, 2013 at 9:36 am
While I did not make it clear in my previous post, I was referring to the lack of low-tier awards and did not mean to imply that there were no award seats to choose from. But in my view only having mid-tier and high-tier awards available (and the ridiculously high mileage requirements accompanying them) is not the way to reward loyal SkyMiles members.
January 17th, 2013 at 2:26 pm
I agree fully with krasowss. Almost lost my marbles when I got the email about the MQDs. While the new Medallion Qualification Dollars only helps individuals like me who fly on refundable tickets because of my agency, it will really put the already shaky Medallion Program further in the druthers. Its nearly impossible since the tiered award travel system to book anything for low mileage (i.e. my brother meets me in Brazil from Chicago for 30K on AA *sigh*). The rollovers are one nice aspect of the program. Its really being pushed as an “enhancement” or an “exclusivity” when really it is not because there are no improvements to the broken booking engine (e.g. empty seat map yet all awards are high level), availability of reasonably priced award tickets, improvement to the cramped lounges, I could go on and on…
January 18th, 2013 at 11:35 am
Goodness gracious, a better travel experience?! Flight 2064 on 1/17/13 a flight at 6:30p from SDF to ATL. Simple flight, right? Not if you have personnel issues and you stereotypically use the constituents of the Louisville, KY as a buffer for your problems. This is a bad habit of your traffic manager and seems to indicate a discriminatory pattern. Maybe a class-action investigation and criminal inquiry would make Delta management take notice to the unusual circumstances around why SDF and the citizens of this state are used as a shock absorber. Maybe we don’t count when we fly first class.
January 20th, 2013 at 11:16 am
I am also a Diamond Medallion member and like most I am flying almost every week. The problems with online booking, award travel and all the little rules and epicycles are there because I do not believe anyone at Delta does a ‘Usability Test’ of these systems. It is extremely easy if you have designed a system to navigate through it and not notice the traps and ‘features’ that become really irritating for users.
It is not uncommon to want to book travel with a couple with one using miles and the other booking a normal flight. You cannot do that on delta.com and guarantee that the couple can sit together – and you cannot do it by calling the medallion line as they apparently cannot book the award/skymiles travel. This is symptomatic of lack of testing. I am sure that there are many frequent fliers that could assist in this testing you should make use of them.
And I agree with krasowss the use of one-way prices which your business managers seem to like is just another irritant – are you ashamed of your full round trip prices that you want to hide them? The Skymiles exchange rate to actual miles seems to be of the order of 30 Skymiles to actual air-miles this is a large jump up and a hidden reduction in benefits – again these are decisions that Delta has made it would be better to tell your business managers not to hide these changes behind one way prices, blackouts, other restrictions and multiple different ‘clever’ names. Be upfront and straightforward and less complicated.
So I would suggest building standard booking scenarios that you can capture from past bookings or by talking to your frequent (and not so frequent) fliers. Then either using your own staff, or preferably people from your target demographic, run tests of your process for usability. Record the misunderstandings and frustrations and have your IT and business people fix them. Remember, this isn’t testing that your site and applications work – it’s usability testing to ensure that your customers can use the system effectively and efficiently and they will vary from people who are trying your site and booking processes for the first time to people like me who regular users.
January 31st, 2013 at 1:03 pm
Delta has steadily become less competitive in pricing, for example the DTW-BOS route where delta has a monopoly, the fare runs between $700 and $800 for RT flight midweek. this compares to $265 for DTW-LGA… similar DTW-BWI is so much cheaper than DTW-DCA also the DELTA web site has become less price shopper friendly with the elimination of the surrounding airport comparison function- despite this, the main web page still offers More Search Options
(Includes Flexible Airport & Meeting Event Code) – but when you go to the advanced page the surrounding flexible airport search is nowhere to be found…all of this has caused me to go to TRAVELOCITY where I can comparison shop and search surrounding airports. Now that I have started doing this, I find other airlines are cheaper, although the DELTA monopoly on certain markets has increased prices. WHERE ARE THE FEDERAL ANTITRUST LAWS when you need them???
April 12th, 2013 at 5:06 am
We boarded our flight from JFK to LHR! It was a night flight and starting to snow, the plane wasn’t full by any means! Air hostesses were really friendly and said we could spread out to sleep if we wished. I didn’t have to as this airline had ample leg room and I’m a tall person, the seat slid forward and reclined and was comfortable……
April 18th, 2013 at 4:16 pm
on flight 802 as I boarded plane, a flight attendant was blocking the entrance to 1st chatting with his buddies. I tapped him on the shoulder and said “excuse me” and he allowed me to pass. he then followed me to my seat to tell me that he did not like to be touched and that I should have simply asked him (or his back which was facing me) to move. difficult to believe that any customer (or, in my case, a diamond 2 million miler flying colonel) would have to ask the flight attendant to pay attention to his passengers, vacate the door to the cabin and then tolerate being reprimanded by the attendant. can’t imagine doing his job without being touched at times. . .
April 19th, 2013 at 9:06 pm
Why does delta allow you to pay for upgrades however don’t give them to you? I am on a flight right now seating in a seat that is not what I purchased and when I tried to show them that I paid for an upgrade they said this is where I and my husband need to sit … They did not know which code stood for what and given that due to a delayed flight I only had 17 mins to get on my second flight and when we got on the flight they said I would have to go and speak to the people at the gate however they where doing final boarding … My husband and I are traveling on our 20 wedding ANV. He is six feet nine inches and over 300 lbs and is in a middle seat
Delta I can’t believe that a flight attendant can’t allow a person to move to an open seat…
Come on
Our first flight was screwed up our second flight is screwed up … Anyone want to take my beat that my third flight will be as well….
April 23rd, 2013 at 2:21 pm
You have got to be kidding me. I have never had more aggravation with an airline in my entire life. Especially over a simple trip. I booked a flight in January and two weeks ago my return flight was cancelled and my friends and I were all put on different returns flight, the one they put me on stopped 3 times to get home! over 11 hours of travel time! So I called and asked to get a refund for the return, the outbound is fine and I WAS ADAMANT about wanting the outbound since a large group is on this flight. They said no problem and its noted on the request, he gave me ticket numbers and case number and to check on status later but refunds take about ten days. So I get an email yesterday saying my request is being processed for the total amount. I quickly call because I dont want to lose my outbound flight and if it gets booked im screwed. So I waited over an hour being put back and forth on hold to finally speak with a supervisor who basically told me “well you wanted a refund and we dont refund part of trip if you want your seat back we can sell you for current ticket price!!!! thats all. I said cant you look back at logs and request to see that. I wasnt asking for a free flight or any special treatment I just wanted what was right and what I was told. How could I talk to someone for an hour about something that cant be done. Why would I want a refund for a roundtrip flight to only then repurchase the same outbound for double the price?!?!? I asked why couldnt they just discount the flight to what i payed because they made a mistake. I was talked to in the rudest manner and I can not believe they just screwed up my trip and cost me so much more money! My ticket number to see 0062169735961! I had to buy the same flight I already had for double what my roundtrip cost, and got a return flight on another airline! So a flight I purchased for 280 in january is costing me $900 total now! UNREAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!