Delta-- 2013 And Still The Worst Airline Since Hezarfen Ahmet Celebi Jumped Off The Galata Tower in 1638

Let me start with the end of the story. I bought a business class ticket on Lufthansa from L.A. to Florence for $3,112. There's a stop in Frankfurt coming and going. The departure and arrival times are all perfect and the wait times in Frankfurt are minimal. Two free bags in cargo and two free bags in the cabin. The plane has WiFi. The whole procedure of buying the ticket took 20 minutes, tops.

I had spent the better part of the day before that-- something like four hours, on the phone, mostly on hold, trying to buy a ticket from L.A. to Florence on Delta. I know, I know... Delta is the worst airline in the western world and only an idiot even attempts to try on it. The problem is one of my credit cards-- an American Express card that I almost never use any longer (because of Delta's affiliation) had racked up tens of thousands of miles on Delta years ago and I've never been able to use them because Delta has a policy of putting up every obstacle imaginable to prevent their customers from ever using miles. Have I mentioned that Delta is the worst airline?

Anyway, I would love to get rid of those miles... so I tried booking a ticket. My dates were flexible and, although I was trying to get to Florence, I told the agent I would be willing to fly into Rome, Milan or Pisa is nothing was available into Florence. I said I didn't mind a layover in any European city if that was necessary. I made it as easy as I could. It didn't matter. Nothing was available. OK, how about if I buy a coach ticket and I use the miles to upgrade to business? She said that she could do. OK. Hours later-- and I'm sure it was more grueling for her than it was for me, who, after all, was just sitting here writing a post about the catastrophe in Cyprus while she scoured the Delta system and the system of all Delta's partners.

Eventually she came up with a somewhat inconvenient flight for $3,400 and something (in coach, but upgradable to business for 50,000 miles). I said OK. I gave her all the info right through to the secret code of the back of my credit card. But by the time she tried to finalize the deal the price had jumped to $6,000 and something. I said, "No, let's find another flight." She made up a story that she had spent more time with me than she was allowed and that she would have to transfer me to another agent. I said OK. She didn't transfer me to anyone, just put me back in the wait line.

That's when it dawned on me that it was CHEAPER to buy a business ticket on Lufthansa (as well as half a dozen other airlines) than an upgradable coach ticket on Delta. I can't believe Delta stays in business. Really, I can't.

Are Frequent Flier Miles Worth the Trouble Anymore?

Some of my friends don't even bother collecting frequent flier miles. I used to be rabid about them. But most of the airlines-- particularly Delta-- have made them so difficult to use for anything worthwhile, that sometimes they barely matter any longer. Bottom Line published a post recently, How to Get More Mileage from Your Frequent-Flier Miles and it has some useful tips. Not earth-shattering, world-changing tips. Delta still sucks beyond belief... but useful tips.

Cashing in frequent-flier miles for the flights that you want can be devilishly difficult. Ways to overcome the barriers�

Use different airlines for different legs of the journey.

In the past, frequent-flier trips essentially had to be round-trips between two destinations on one airline or its partners-- that�s how the programs offered awards tickets. Today most airlines offer awards tickets per flight. So if you can�t find both the outbound and return awards seats you want at the frequent-flier price you want on one airline, you can search for a flight for each leg separately on two different airlines, assuming that you have enough miles on both airlines.

Add a third leg.

On some airlines, you might be able to add an extra destination without increasing the number of required frequent-flier miles. For instance, on Delta you could fly from New York City to London, then a few days later, from London to Paris on the same airline or one of its partner airlines, and then from Paris back to New York City. However, airlines are increasingly phasing out this practice.

Participate in the Southwest, JetBlue or Virgin America frequent-flier program.

These airlines do not impose limits on the number of available awards seats on a flight. Any seat that is available for cash also is available for frequent-flier miles.

There is a downside-- the number of miles required for an awards ticket increases with the cash price of the ticket. Still, participating in one of these three programs is a great way to ensure that you can get an awards ticket even to popular destinations and/or during busy travel times.

Call a reservations agent.

Airlines now impose fees for booking awards tickets over the phone-- usually around $25 per passenger for the entire trip-- but calling an agent can make sense when you�re having trouble finding the best ticket.

Good reservations agents not only know the ins and outs of the awards seat booking system, they also often have options available to them that are not available to customers through the airline�s Web site. These include cobbling together trips using partner airlines� changing planes in less obvious airports� or perhaps even unlocking seats that are not listed on the site as awards seats.

You pay nothing if the reservations agent can�t find a solution that satisfies you and you don�t book a ticket.

Book early, book late or book holiday flights.

The single best time to find an awards seat is 330 days before the flight, when these seats first enter the system. However, additional awards seats often enter the system within two weeks of departure. Awards seats also tend to be plentiful for people willing to travel on Christmas or Thanksgiving Day rather than during the week before or after.

Redeem British Airways miles on the airline�s partner, American Airlines.

British Airways (BA) now charges extremely steep fuel surcharges. A �free� round-trip flight between the US and London could cost upward of $500-- on top of the frequent-flier miles required. That includes unavoidable taxes, but it�s mostly the fuel surcharge. Many other foreign airlines charge fuel surcharges, too, though most are nowhere near as steep as those of BA. To avoid these massive surcharges, redeem BA miles for flights on American Airlines, a BA partner airline that does not impose fuel surcharges.

Delta Threatens To Leave U.S.

Oh boy... 2,000 extra bonus points from Delta, the airline that doesn't let their customers use frequent flier miles! The above ad came as an e-mail yesterday, the same day Delta threatened to follow Blackwater, Halliburton and other extreme right-wing companies out of the U.S. Richard Anderson, who's personally donated tens of thousands of dollars to right-wing politicians-- including heavy contributions to Boehner, McConnell, Romney, McCain and deranged nihilistic teabaggers like Tim Walberg (R-MI), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), John Bircher Paul Broun (R-GA) and Taliban Dan Webster (R-FL)-- told a crackpot Fox propagandist, Neil Cavuto, that he might pick up his toys (Delta) and leave Atlanta (and the U.S.) if he isn't free to keep up his anti-union policies.

Anderson is grumpy because of a change in labor policy that makes it easier for union organizers to win elections.



To understand what's changed you need to know that in the past, when employees were presented with the option of joining a union it wasn't just the "yes" votes and the "no" votes that were counted. The number of people who did not vote was tallied too and those non-votes were considered "no" votes. The philosophy behind this somewhat odd practice is to make sure that a majority of all employees vote for the change, giving a voice even to those workers who don't want one enough to actually cast a vote.



...Certainly Delta is not alone in opposing anything that will increase the likelihood of unionizing. Fed Ex and UPS are also said to be lobbying hard to overturn the new National Mediation Board policy on union elections.



But it's only Delta's top dog who decided to go on national television and threaten the nation with its exodus.



"Capital is mobile" Anderson said in a not-at-all-veiled threat that if Congress comes down on the wrong side of the unionization policy, companies will pack up and move, repeating the threat three times.



Where might unhappy companies like his go you might ask? Anderson cites appreciatively the locomotive-like economies in Brazil and China. Now if Delta is planning to pull up stakes from Atlanta, its home for the last 70 years and carry its kit and kaboodle down to Rio or Shanghai that's news! Unfortunately, and Mr. Anderson surely knows this, a raft of restrictions would have to be changed for a US airline to makes its headquarters anywhere outside of the USA.

Delta's employees are generally so dispirited that the company's service is miserable and Delta is widely considered the worst airline in America. Dozens of groups are boycotting it for dozens of different reasons. Survey after survey show that they rank at the bottom of the heap in everything travelers care about-- and since Anderson took over and made Delta a vehicle for his neo-fascist political agenda, the airline has gotten noticeably worse.

Delta Sinks To New Levels Of Passenger Rip-Off

As usual, Delta won the dubious honor this year of being this blog's Worst Overall Airline... again. They really just suck on every level. Turns out the service is so bad because upper management is such a bunch of greed-obsessed reactionaries. Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution went on and one about how that city's biggest carrier pulled a fast one on its customers after the right-wing ideologues in Congress shut down the FAA. The shutdown keeps the FAA from collecting about $200 million a week in ticket taxes. But instead of letting that accrue to fliers, Delta gobbled it up itself by increasing the base fares it charges.

Airlines have complained for years that taxes added to ticket prices drive up the cost of travel. But when those tax collections stopped last weekend and airlines had a rare chance to give fliers a break, most opted to keep prices the same and pocket the difference.

�It just seems like it was the perfect chance for the airlines to throw a bone in consumer satisfaction,� said FareCompare.com CEO Rick Seaney.

�Consumers feel like they�ve been nickel-and-dimed in the past, (and) this is a windfall that wasn�t expected... �Why wouldn�t [airlines] give consumers at least half the benefit?� Seaney said.

The suspended taxes include a 7.5 percent excise tax, a $3.70 tax per flight segment and other taxes for international flights.

As the partial shutdown continued this week, some public officials have criticized the airlines� decision, and two U.S. senators wrote a letter of complaint to Delta�s chief executive, who also is chairman of a major airline lobbying group.

Delta, as always, started whining about the high price of jet fuel. They little windfall at customers expense amounts to between $4 and $5 million a day. In the U.S. Senate, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) lashed out at their greed:

I wish I understood why the policy objections of one company-Delta Air Lines-mattered more than the livelihoods of thousands of people. Last year, the CEO of Delta made $9 million. Delta paid its top executives almost $20 million. Yet, it is fighting to make sure its employees cannot organize for fear that they may secure a few extra dollars in their paychecks. At the same time it is pushing for special interest provisions in the FAA bill, Delta announced it was abandoning air service to 26 small rural communities-leaving many of them without air service.

Delta then had the gall to announce publicly it would seek EAS subsidies to continue this service. Maybe Mr. Anderson and his colleagues could forgo some of their salary to help subsidize this air service. Maybe they could use some of the millions of dollars they are collecting in a tax holiday windfall to pay for this service. Their actions are shameful.

Let me be clear, House Republicans and their Senate allies have thrown nearly four thousand FAA employees out of work, stopped critical airport safety projects, hurt hundreds of small businesses, and gutted the Aviation Trust Fund, all so that Delta Air Lines doesn't have to allow its employees to organize in a fair and timely manner.

The needs of one company should not dictate the safety and soundness of our aviation system. We need to pass a clean extension that will get people back to work, and businesses and their employees back to work building out critical airport infrastructure.

Delta Airlines-- Still The Worst Carrier In The Skies... But Even More So

Delta has been the #1 worst U.S. airline every year in a row since the founding of this blog-- and that's just based on their service. Turns out, though, there's more to Delta's unsuitability as a reliable travel partner than how badly the management runs their operations. As yesterday's Wall Street Journal pointed out, the airline is a bastion of right-wing anti-worker extremism. No wonder their employees always seem so down in the dumps and resentful! The National Mediation Board is now investigating charges by flight attendants that Delta, the only non-Union U.S. airline, illegally interfered in unionization elections by pressuring employees to vote against the unions. As Joe Sudbay observed at AmericaBlog yesterday, "Delta is like the Scott Walker of airlines. It wants to be known as anti-worker."

We can probably expect even more skullduggery from Delta in the coming weeks as they double down in their anti-union jihad. They've been a lead driver in pushing Republican extremists in the House to rescind fair election rules for air/rail workers for elections conducted under the National Mediation Board. For progressives who care about keeping elections fair, giving workers the choice whether or not they want to join a union, and supporting companies who operate under basic standards of decency, there are a number of reasons for progressives to be outraged about Delta Airlines:

� Open advocacy against fair American elections: Delta issued a press release commending the news that Darrell Issa's deranged Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will investigate the NMB�s 2010 decision to conduct union elections for air/rail workers the same as all other types of American elections. Mike Campbell, Delta�s executive vice president of H.R. and Labor Relations said, "This investigation is an important victory for Delta people because it will finally allow the facts to speak for themselves.� Unfortunately for Delta, the facts aren�t on their side-- there�s no reason to conduct NMB elections differently from every other form of election, union or non-union, in the nation. If congressional and Senate elections were conducted under such rules, in which non-participating eligible voters were counted as having voted, then zero Members of Congress would have won their last election.

� Bumping paying customers�so Delta employees can lobby: Delta is so committed to its anti-union ideology that it offered its employees the chance to travel to Washington to lobby against fair union elections under a provision that may bump paying customers. Talking Points Memo reported that the group No Way AFA, �a coalition of Delta employees who want to deliberalize union rights,� came to Washington the week of the House vote on the FAA Reauthorization bill to lobby against fair election standards... and potentially bumping paying Delta customers in the process. According to the article, �A Delta spokesperson said No Way AFA operates separately from the company itself, but that the company "allow[s] employees to travel positive space to D.C. when supporting legislative efforts that the company supports.� According to TPM, this means that �the "positive space" fly-in could squeeze out seating space for regular travelers.�

� Free upgrades and lining the pockets of policymaker friends: An investigative journalism piece in Georgia recently found that leading Republican lawmakers in Georgia�s state legislature received free upgrades from Delta to platinum status, valued at approximately $10,000 to $15,000 per year. Valued as campaign contributions, the piece noted that Delta low-balled the reported value of the platinum upgrades in state ethics records. Unsurprisingly, Delta has a long history of being generous to lawmakers like Rep. John Mica, who have voted the right way in Delta�s eyes by seeking to return NMB union elections to the old, undemocratic rules.

I've long been going out of my way to look for alternatives to flying on Delta just because of the lousy service and their refusal to let people use frequent flier miles, but now I can see there are even more reasons to avoid the worst airline in the skies.

Is It Safe To Fly on Delta?

I'm sure there's a totally reasonable explanation for why all the U.S. carriers now offer the worst service in the skies and why Delta is even worse than the other U.S. airlines. I've long given up on Delta-- and even hesitate to use the American Express credit card that is attached to it's frequent flyer program-- and always look for an alternative when I'm flying. After Friday's blatantly bigoted outrage in Memphis, I would think a lot more Americans will stop flying Delta as well.

I suppose if you're some provincial, bucktoothed bumpkin who's never seen a Muslim cleric, one look at the two Muslim scholars boarding the Delta flight to Charlotte would be enough to ensure a panic attack. Fortunately the pilot restrained himself from shooting them and merely kicked them off "his" plane (before it took off). It didn't matter that they had been searched and body-searched not once, but twice. They had Muslim beards and hippie clothes.

Masudur Rahman, a professor of Arabic at the University of Memphis, and Mohamed Zaghloul, Imam at the Islamic Association of Greater Memphis, were asked to deplane Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight 5452 from Memphis to Charlotte. They were subjected to additional security checks after the plane had pushed back from the gate, Rahman told Reuters by telephone.

After additional screening, the two men were cleared by Delta representatives to re-board the plane, but were then told the pilot would not take them, Rahman said.

Rahman said both men had been cleared for check-in and boarding by airline and Transportation Security Administration officials during normal pre-flight procedures.

According to a TSA spokesman, the decision to remove the two passengers was made by the airline.

Delta apologized-- to the non-Muslim passengers who were inconvenienced by the delay. The two Muslims were, ironically enough, headed for a conference on Islamophobia, where they were scheduled to lead prayers. They were 9 hours late for the conference. Delta couldn't be doing a better job if they were being paid directly by al-Qaeda. In fairness, I need to point out that Delta doesn't just discriminate against Muslims; they hate musicians (especially violinists) as well-- and musicians have joined the Delta Boycott. I hope the world's 1.5 billion Muslims do as well.

Wireless Service Coming To Delta

I've often mentioned that Delta is the worst of all the awful domestic carriers. I try to avoid flying that airline when there is an alternative going to the same destination. I even stopped using my American Express card and using my Master Card instead, the former hooked up to Delta and the latter to the less venal American. It seems like all the news we get from the airline industry these days is bad news. Earlier in the week I wrote about the heinous, anti-democratic rich-people-to-the-front-of-the-line-please Fly Clear program. And we've all been experiencing how the airlines are nickeling and diming us all to death with fees for everything. I'm certain pay toilets on board are next-- and I'll bet Delta leads the way.

Still, to be fair, Delta is actually leading the way on something awesome for a change-- albeit a new way of squeezing more money out of travelers. According to today's Washington Post wireless Internet starts this fall! Actually it'll only be on 133 MD88/90 planes this fall. The rest of the fleet won't be ready 'til next summer. "The service will be available to customers for a flat fee of $9.95 on flights of three hours or less and $12.95 on flights of more than three hours."


UPDATE: Meanwhile, JetBlue Is Charging For A Pillow

I just saw a Jet Blue executive, CEO Jeff Barger, making the unique, if twisted, case that his company's decision to start charging $7 for a pillow and a blanket was a great bargain. Apparently those pillows and blankets we've all been using on planes were filthy and germ-ridden and only laundered every few weeks. The $7 ones are fresh and clean and you get to take it with you... if you have room in your costly checked luggage.

The new issue of Time points out that Southwest is the "one major airline that is bucking the trend of increasing fees... [and] still doesn't charge for checked bags (up to two), nonalcoholic drinks, blankets or making a change to your flight." On the other end of the spectrum, USAirways "broke new ground last week by starting to charge for all beverages: $2 for a soft drink (or even a bottle of water); $1 for coffee or tea. Checked bags cost $15 and $25; flight changes are $150."