Delta has no non-stop flights anymore

[BigTigger]

I agree, from a fleet management stand point, Delta was a major player in the large Florida destinations (Orlando, Tampa, Ft Lauderdale/Miami, Ft Myers) and often flew large (Boeing 767's) into those destinations JAMMED PACKED with people. Now, it seems they have started serving those destinations with smaller aircraft (Boeing 737's, MD-88's) and have really cut back daily flights from ATL to MCO, down to around 5 or 6 a day. Intresting move on their part. They have however become a much larger player in the Carribbean and Mexico, where they have begun daily nonstops to many exotic destinations, giving American Airlines some competition at those destinations...

Delta has been holding focus groups recently with their more frequent flyers (I've been Platinum with them for 5 years running) and they asked the question of us at one point of what Delta needed to do to earn our business back. Before I could answer, another participant opined that they should remember their roots as a carrier serving the southeast and the eastern seaboard routes. He then ticked off a list of Delta flights that now must go through Atlanta or are on regional jets and how they have lost the bulk of his business due to that strategy. A second participant noted the loss of Song has greatly changed how they serve the northeast and that only JFK seems to have the same number of flights to Florida with other markets seeing less flights and smaller planes. The answers they gave for the first question were that for #1, the use of Atlanta for a hub gave more service to the southeast, just not direct service. They also said that the new 5th runway in Atlanta would remove 90% of the bottlenecks historically found in the Atlanta hub. On question #2, they admitted that only JFK in the northeast has increased flights and this is due to the new international hub there. Markets like Boston, Hartford, etc. would see less flights and less competition with low cost carriers as Delta could not sustain a business model to compete with JetBlue, etc. by offering cheap flights. I asked them how they could consider JB a cost oriented competitor when they are usually $250 and up for roundtrip flights to Florida these days from Boston and they still choose to compete with them out of the NYC market. The only answer they gave is that JB's recent pricing was due to fuel costs and they expected longer term price competition to make Song type service out of Boston and other northeast markets to be unprofitable. They then cut off discussion on that area and moved to other items on the focus group list. One other item covered was the new premium service they are rolling out. They asked what sort of premium we would pay for a true first class service and what sort of premium we would pay for an expanded coach type service (similar to United Economy Plus by how they described it). They were primarily asking if a $200/$400/$600 premium based on flight length for the former and a $100/$150/$200 premium for the latter were something we'd consider paying for. Most people were lukewarm to the idea given Continental and United offer forms of each for little or no additional charge today.

 

[miss missy]

Thanks for the info !

 

[Pugrpooh]

We had booked Delta from Louisville to Orlando non-stop, leaving 7 am and arriving 9:05. Great flight. But they changed it to a layover in Cincinnati. Now we leave at 6:30 and arrive MCO at 10:23. I checked Delta's schedule and every other day that week they offer the 7 am non-stop. They just cancelled it the day we were using it.

I briefly thought about changing all of our reservations by a day, but decided it wasn't worth it.