The summer travel season is well underway, and I share the excitement of so many of you who are returning to the skies as restrictions lift and entire regions of the world reopen. At the same time, I know many of you may have experienced disruptions, sometimes significant, in your travels as we build our operation back from the depths of 2020 while accommodating a record level of demand. If you’ve encountered delays and cancellations recently, I apologize. We’ve spent years establishing Delta Air Lines as the industry leader in reliability, and though the majority of our flights continue to operate on time, this level of disruption and uncertainty is unacceptable. We’re excited to see you returning to the skies, and every flight is an opportunity to earn your loyalty and trust anew. On behalf of our global team, I want to thank you for your patience and understanding as we work throughout the summer and beyond to get you to your destination safely and restore the world-class reliability that you deserve and have come to expect from Delta.
Dear Mr. Bastian, I am unfortunately not feeling your commitment to me and my family. I earned Diamond status in 2019 by being firmly committed to flying only Delta. Two weeks ago, your company completely failed on probably the most important trip of my life, one planned for two years specifically for our grandkids. Delta failed to refund a ticket for a family member who unexpectedly passed away earlier this year, canceled our flight minutes before boarding completely causing us to miss our first night at a Castle we rented in Ireland, gave us hotel vouchers with no rooms available, wouldn't rebook half of our party until 2 more days later causing us to pay an enormous amount of money to rebook on Spirt and United to get them to Ireland at the same time as us, kept rebooking us on flights with no seats available causing an enormous amount of stress, 4 of us booked in Delta One ended up in Main, and didn't get us our luggage for another day and a half after we finally arrived in Dublin. To make matters worse, we see people offered $10,000 to give up one seat and all we received were $200 vouchers only good for another flight, not even a refund for the hotel voucher. 😡
Jim Richter
1y
This is a "mea culpa" for making the critical error of removing skilled staff to deal with a short term crisis even after taking financial assistance from taxpayers. Poor management decisions caused this here and in most of the airlines that made the same mistakes. You screwed up and now you're paying the price of gutting your skilled staff which isn't going to be resolved quickly.
Rene Naranjo
1y
Delta the best airline in the World!!! I owe you very much l flew you for more than 20 years got to the status of Diamond Medallion & never have I felt better going to work and treated great as a valued customer, from all the meals, to super friendly delta employees, from the pilots, to flight attendants, to your corporate people, & the commitment delta had to always bringing me back home safely. I thank you for all that & will never forget how much you made my business work life comfortable while I was away from my family, in a way you became my family, while I was away from home. God Bless Delta airlines and all your employees. Keep up the great job!!! & Thank You.
We recently flew Delta and experienced a long delay as Delta personnel tried to entice passengers to take a flight the next day, plus a gift card. Once the amount was increased to $2,000, enough passengers took the offer and we were able to leave 1.5 hours late. The food service was sub par (and that is being kind) compared to Delta standards and other airlines we flew. I hope my next trip on Delta will be up to standard.
As a loyal Delta customer I applaud your leadership. Owning a problem and being transparent are essential in times like this.
Jed Meyer
1y
Please empower your people in person and on chat as they are very nice and want to help but simply can’t. We had flight delay, spent two hours on phone until 1am to switch to a flight that left at 8am the next morning all so we would make our connecting. Your statements above held true as even though that was frustrating, you tried your best and we were not happy but could live with it as it all ended up working out. That said talking to a representative in person and chat they could not refund the seat downgrade we had to take when changing flights and both told us to go online to fill out a complaint which we have done two times with still no response. That is frustrating as those on chat and in person were really nice and wanted to help us but could not- empower your people and they WILL take care of DELTA and your customers. Plus you have nothing to lose as what you are doing right now in trying to process your communication with your customers is not working whatsoever and your reputation risk is so much greater than any decision you apparently are worried about your employee making by not allowing them any freedom to help your customers
I like the idea that Delta is trying so get things together as we come out of the pandemic lockdown, due to high demand, delta sky club was forced to make major changes namely discontinue the one time access passes to reduce overcrowding, if there is one thing that I could change is that first class passengers would automatically have sky club access so that your first class experience can start before you get to the plane ✈️, folks pay a lot more for first class, don’t you think that sky club access should be included in the ticket price? With many airlines it actually is included.
Brian DeRoy
1y
Honesty from the top is a great thing and admitting the company could be doing better. One thing not said is the large number of pilots Delta gave early retirements to. It's too costly and time consuming to bring them back because they need to be re-trained and would be on the bottom of seniority lists, something no experienced flyer would want to do. Because so many pilots were let go, there's not enough to fly now and that's why pilots are being forced to work massive amounts of OT. A tired #pilot puts everyone at risk. Please address this issue Ed Bastian I'm a #stockholder who sees shares plummeting, not good. #avgeek
Innovative Team Leader ✪ Variable & Fixed Operations Expert ✪ KPI Driven Strategist
1yAs a loyal Delta DM that travels weekly I appreciate the message. I am fortunate to be in a position that my company allows me to choose Delta exclusively for my weekly trips. However the recent operational difficulties and some of the extreme fare increases is making it difficult to continue to book your airline, and much of the good will that Delta has built up over the last few years is being rapidly eroded. I’m looking forward to improvements you will make for frequent business traveler.