Pretty impressive considering it includes Delta Connection AND an on-time ratio of nearly 93%.

How did your airline make out?

Delta Air Lines flew more than 2.35 million customers on nearly 23,000 flights during the holiday period from Wednesday to Sunday without a single cancellation anywhere across its global operation and an on-time rate of 92.7 percent.1
The strong operational performance during one of the busiest travel periods of the year continues an 11-day streak without a mainline or Delta Connection regional flight cancellation and a more than 42-day streak on the mainline, eclipsing a previous airline record by more than 10 days.2

entire story here:


http://news.delta.com/delta-flies-cance ... ng-holiday

My DL flight, DL167 NRT-SIN on Nov 6 was cancelled. Does that not count on the 42 day streak, or did I misread it?

Jetblue also had zero cancellations over the holiday period. Apparently, their lavatories work just as well as Delta's when there aren't any ATC programs in the Northeast.

mcogator wrote:

My DL flight, DL167 NRT-SIN on Nov 6 was cancelled. Does that not count on the 42 day streak, or did I misread it?

If I recall correctly, the last time Delta issued a press release bragging about a streak there was some fine print stating that all the days were not in a row. That must be the case this time since there are only 20 days between your flight on November 6 and today when DL 477 was cancelled.

IPFreely wrote:

mcogator wrote:

My DL flight, DL167 NRT-SIN on Nov 6 was cancelled. Does that not count on the 42 day streak, or did I misread it?

If I recall correctly, the last time Delta issued a press release bragging about a streak there was some fine print stating that all the days were not in a row. That must be the case this time since there are only 20 days between your flight on November 6 and today when DL 477 was cancelled.

Seems to me that DL doesn't understand the generally accepted meaning of "streak."

I am always skeptical of these clams by Delta including no 'mainline cancellations' in the past.

I recall a DL MSP-LHR flight delayed over 24 hours. It eventually arrived at LHR past curfew over a day late. In most normal circumstances that flight would be deemed cancelled. DL extended the delay in order to avoid a cancellation statistic and I think they do things like that all the time to protect their highly coveted and bragged about results.

AA100 wrote:

I am always skeptical of these clams by Delta including no 'mainline cancellations' in the past.

I recall a DL MSP-LHR flight delayed over 24 hours. It eventually arrived at LHR past curfew over a day late. In most normal circumstances that flight would be deemed cancelled. DL extended the delay in order to avoid a cancellation statistic and I think they do things like that all the time to protect their highly coveted and bragged about results.

The general public, and the general fanboy crowd, doesn't consider that sort of technicality. Luckily the passengers affected do, in the end, when they book their next flight.

jumbojet wrote:

Pretty impressive considering it includes Delta Connection AND an on-time ratio of nearly 93%.

How did your airline make out?

Delta Air Lines flew more than 2.35 million customers on nearly 23,000 flights during the holiday period from Wednesday to Sunday without a single cancellation anywhere across its global operation and an on-time rate of 92.7 percent.1
The strong operational performance during one of the busiest travel periods of the year continues an 11-day streak without a mainline or Delta Connection regional flight cancellation and a more than 42-day streak on the mainline, eclipsing a previous airline record by more than 10 days.2

entire story here:


http://news.delta.com/delta-flies-cance ... ng-holiday

UA reported 99.6% consolidated completion (Nov19-26) including 3 straight days of Mainline completion and 5 straight days of Express completion.

77H

Everytime someone posts these PR releases it always turns into a predictable "haters going to hate" thread. It is what it is....
I do agree that sometimes these PR releases are a bit cringe-worthy, since they are sort of like stating the obvious, but I would expect an airline's PR and marketing department to seize the opportunity to push out positive stories.

Instead of having an intelligent conversation about what they are doing operationally or what factors led to this it turns into a bash-fest for whatever airline is mentioned.
A.net is worse than some of the college football forums I follow in terms of being able to have semi-rational, objective, or intelligent posts.

A few points:
1) There was favorable weather for the vast majority of the continental United States over the entire Thanksgiving holiday weekend, in particular no significant weather events impacting any of the major hubs or the big East Coast cities. Unlike other years this was a big contributor into having high on-time and completion factors

2) There are generally ample spare aircraft at this time of the year as Thanksgiving weekend operates at a level below that of peak summer schedule, but tends to have very different customer mix skewing toward infrequent travelers and virtual no business travel.

3) A completion despite a long delay is in most cases a better outcome than a cancellation since the capacity is still flown and the aircraft and crew is still getting to its downline destination.

It should also note that DL didn't operate a full schedule over the weekend; many normal flights didn't happen or routes with multiple frequencies were reduced. But still impressive to meet the schedule. No weather issues I think but also the bigger issue is that many times over holidays, many passengers that fly aren't regular fliers and many senior staff take off. I had to fly DL on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and it was seamless and pleasant. I flew Air Canada the Sunday after (from US to UK) and it was miserable. Will never do that again!

Flight #39 SEA-HKG on 11/9/17 was cancelled. Passengers were flown to HKG on flight #9xxx the following day, with a different aircraft, with a departure delay of nearly 21 hours.

PSU.DTW.SCE wrote:

Everytime someone posts these PR releases it always turns into a predictable "haters going to hate" thread. It is what it is....
I do agree that sometimes these PR releases are a bit cringe-worthy, since they are sort of like stating the obvious, but I would expect an airline's PR and marketing department to seize the opportunity to push out positive stories.

Instead of having an intelligent conversation about what they are doing operationally or what factors led to this it turns into a bash-fest for whatever airline is mentioned.
A.net is worse than some of the college football forums I follow in terms of being able to have semi-rational, objective, or intelligent posts.

A few points:
1) There was favorable weather for the vast majority of the continental United States over the entire Thanksgiving holiday weekend, in particular no significant weather events impacting any of the major hubs or the big East Coast cities. Unlike other years this was a big contributor into having high on-time and completion factors

2) There are generally ample spare aircraft at this time of the year as Thanksgiving weekend operates at a level below that of peak summer schedule, but tends to have very different customer mix skewing toward infrequent travelers and virtual no business travel.

3) A completion despite a long delay is in most cases a better outcome than a cancellation since the capacity is still flown and the aircraft and crew is still getting to its downline destination.

I more correct way to measure how good Delta is doing is to tell us what percentage of customers arrived at their destination on time. Like everyone says this really means nothing because Delta can endlessly delay a flight and not cancel it so. Maybe to you and Delta a completion or a delay is better than a cancellation but to me it's the same thing if I arrive at my destination 6 hours late or if I miss a connection because Delta didn't cancel then I'm still screwed. I think the reason for this is because of the over all lack of capacity in the system today it really does help Delta to not cancel because it's much more difficult to rebook 150 displaced passengers in the current capacity environment when most planes are already close to being full than it is just to operate a flight that may be 4 to 6 hours late. This statistic really should mean nothing to most educated airline people it nothing more than false propaganda.

How do they do it ?? Spare standby aircraft ??

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, one of the busiest of the year, Delta flew 2.35 million customers on nearly 23,000 flights during the holiday period from Wednesday to Sunday without a single cancellation on it's global system and an on-time rate of 92.7%.

Quite a feat.

There were CRJ-700s loading with 65-75 bags, and if you have ever seen bin 2 (rear) of a DL Connection -700 it’s very small due to the fact that they moved the bathroom back to put in more seats. -900s were probably averaging 80-95 bags too on the heaviest flights.

But then folks chime in and say that it doesn't include Delta Connection's stats. Well, guess what, this time it does. In fact, Delta and Delta Connection went 11 days without a cancellation. Delta definitely ranks best in class for operational performance, continuing to set the bar for others to follow. In fact, Delta mainline just went 43 consecutive days without a cancellation.

mcogator wrote:

My DL flight, DL167 NRT-SIN on Nov 6 was cancelled. Does that not count on the 42 day streak, or did I misread it?

According to the footnote in the Delta public relations piece, the "streak" includes the entire year:
[2] Based on Delta internal flight operations reporting for Jan. 1 to Nov. 27, 2017

In other words, 42 discrete days since Jan. 1, not 42 days in a row.

COSPN wrote:

How do they do it ?? Spare standby aircraft ??

Delta does tend to have a low cancellation rate. Here are the latest numbers in this report

https://www.transportation.gov/sites/do ... eratcr.pdf

The cancellation free discussion is a bit unusual. Delta has a great reliable operation, especially for a US carrier. The blow airlines like Spirit who are the cancellation leader out of the water. They are no where near the reliability of some of the top performing airlines in Asia like ANA/JAL etc. Top reliability requires spare aircraft, large spare part inventory, significant maintenance capability across the network and the ability to limit deferred maintenance items to an absolute minimum. Delta does a pretty good job at that, but the cancel free numbers are a bit misleading. Delta has some long delays and some times the lack of cancellations doesn't always make sense when scrutinized. For example Delta may delay a flight 24 hours whereas United or American may have cancelled the flight and issued a new flight number for the recovery flight. Completion factor metrics can get a bit confusing. I personally remember scratching my head one day while looking at the departure boards during bad weather and saw that Delta had delayed some flights 6-18 hours from the prior day and kept the same flight numbers instead of cancelling. It is an airline decision and sometimes you see Delta delaying a flight whereas another may have cancelled and replaced it.

Every airline is different and the DOT statistics and SPEC 2000 reliability data is fairly good at creating some consistency, but it isn't perfect. The differences between airlines reporting strategies can let conversations get a little bombastic based on prejudice. It's even more interesting to go to airline industry meetings to see representatives from the airlines discuss it.

Are we supposed to congratulate airlines for doing what they are supposed to do?

PSU.DTW.SCE wrote:

Everytime someone posts these PR releases it always turns into a predictable "haters going to hate" thread. It is what it is....
I do agree that sometimes these PR releases are a bit cringe-worthy, since they are sort of like stating the obvious, but I would expect an airline's PR and marketing department to seize the opportunity to push out positive stories.

Instead of having an intelligent conversation about what they are doing operationally or what factors led to this it turns into a bash-fest for whatever airline is mentioned.
A.net is worse than some of the college football forums I follow in terms of being able to have semi-rational, objective, or intelligent posts.

A few points:
1) There was favorable weather for the vast majority of the continental United States over the entire Thanksgiving holiday weekend, in particular no significant weather events impacting any of the major hubs or the big East Coast cities. Unlike other years this was a big contributor into having high on-time and completion factors

2) There are generally ample spare aircraft at this time of the year as Thanksgiving weekend operates at a level below that of peak summer schedule, but tends to have very different customer mix skewing toward infrequent travelers and virtual no business travel.

3) A completion despite a long delay is in most cases a better outcome than a cancellation since the capacity is still flown and the aircraft and crew is still getting to its downline destination.

Well stated as usual PSU.....thank you for a rational intelligent post.

Super80Fan wrote:

Are we supposed to congratulate airlines for doing what they are supposed to do?

Agreed. These PRs get to be a bit much sometimes.

klm617 wrote:

I more correct way to measure how good Delta is doing is to tell us what percentage of customers arrived at their destination on time. Like everyone says this really means nothing because Delta can endlessly delay a flight and not cancel it so. Maybe to you and Delta a completion or a delay is better than a cancellation but to me it's the same thing if I arrive at my destination 6 hours late or if I miss a connection because Delta didn't cancel then I'm still screwed. I think the reason for this is because of the over all lack of capacity in the system today it really does help Delta to not cancel because it's much more difficult to rebook 150 displaced passengers in the current capacity environment when most planes are already close to being full than it is just to operate a flight that may be 4 to 6 hours late. This statistic really should mean nothing to most educated airline people it nothing more than false propaganda.

Well thankfully what's considered on-time or completed isn't up to A.net posters (although it would be a hilarious exercise to see everyone create their own system to make their fanboy carrier look best). In reality, it's up to the DOT. Don't hate the players, hate the game. Don't like the DOT rules, write your congressperson.

FWIW, when I worked for UA, we routinely delayed flights over 12+ hours to complete them (and carry the lift that couldn't be absorbed on other flights). I suspect it's also the same at AA and many other major carriers.

Always nice to see this happen. Thanksgiving is one of the busiest travel days of the year. Everyone fears delays and travel nightmares. It didnt happen this year. Not a bad thing. Reading this blog would seem if passengers weren't harmed by delays, certain posters are offended. Come on.

OA412 wrote:

Super80Fan wrote:

Are we supposed to congratulate airlines for doing what they are supposed to do?

Agreed. These PRs get to be a bit much sometimes.

But isn't the point of an aviation blog to discuss aviation? So if you don't like the topic, don't participate.

Super80Fan wrote:

Are we supposed to congratulate airlines for doing what they are supposed to do?

The airline was patting the employees on the back. Don't you wish your company did that. I know you do. I worked for AA and my brother still does. Unless AA isn't kicking employees in the teeth, they have nothing nice to say. Irrefutable.

The naysayers blow it out of proportion on airliners.net and turn everything into something it isn't. Many don't realize don't have to click on the thread. Best part about the naysayers is they have never worked for an airline.

No worries.

twinotter wrote:

mcogator wrote:

My DL flight, DL167 NRT-SIN on Nov 6 was cancelled. Does that not count on the 42 day streak, or did I misread it?

According to the footnote in the Delta public relations piece, the "streak" includes the entire year:
[2] Based on Delta internal flight operations reporting for Jan. 1 to Nov. 27, 2017

In other words, 42 discrete days since Jan. 1, not 42 days in a row.

Under no circumstances could that be the understanding. Either the 42-day mark is an error, or there is some other metric we don't know (like only including domestic operations).

Wow, there are some pretty SNARKY remarks about a great job done by Delta and their employees.
I think several A-net posters need to check their JEALOUSY SHOWING annunciator light and take immediate steps to solve the problem.

flymco753 wrote:

There were CRJ-700s loading with 65-75 bags, and if you have ever seen bin 2 (rear) of a DL Connection -700 it’s very small due to the fact that they moved the bathroom back to put in more seats. -900s were probably averaging 80-95 bags too on the heaviest flights.

65-75 & 80-95 seems quite low actually (even more so if that includes planeside bags). We had probably about 40-50% of CR9 flights with 100+ checked plus planeside over the weekend.

alasizon wrote:

flymco753 wrote:

There were CRJ-700s loading with 65-75 bags, and if you have ever seen bin 2 (rear) of a DL Connection -700 it’s very small due to the fact that they moved the bathroom back to put in more seats. -900s were probably averaging 80-95 bags too on the heaviest flights.

65-75 & 80-95 seems quite low actually (even more so if that includes planeside bags). We had probably about 40-50% of CR9 flights with 100+ checked plus planeside over the weekend.

I never thought one could fit that many bags in a CR7/9

reltney wrote:

The airline was patting the employees on the back. Don't you wish your company did that. I know you do. I worked for AA and my brother still does. Unless AA isn't kicking employees in the teeth, they have nothing nice to say. Irrefutable.

I think the fact that DL made it into pr release muddies those waters. If it was solely for employee appreciation I feel like it would be delivered internally only not via their media room. Even though it may have started as that, DL definitely used this time to chest thump to everyone else.

INFINITI329 wrote:

reltney wrote:

The airline was patting the employees on the back. Don't you wish your company did that. I know you do. I worked for AA and my brother still does. Unless AA isn't kicking employees in the teeth, they have nothing nice to say. Irrefutable.

I think the fact that DL made it into pr release muddies those waters. If it was solely for employee appreciation I feel like it would be delivered internally only not via their media room. Even though it may have started as that, DL definitely used this time to chest thump to everyone else.

Absolutely agree 100%, this should've been an internal memo. Like I said, I don't congratulate and praise airlines for doing what I pay them to do.

Boston92 wrote:

twinotter wrote:

mcogator wrote:

My DL flight, DL167 NRT-SIN on Nov 6 was cancelled. Does that not count on the 42 day streak, or did I misread it?

According to the footnote in the Delta public relations piece, the "streak" includes the entire year:
[2] Based on Delta internal flight operations reporting for Jan. 1 to Nov. 27, 2017

In other words, 42 discrete days since Jan. 1, not 42 days in a row.

Under no circumstances could that be the understanding. Either the 42-day mark is an error, or there is some other metric we don't know (like only including domestic operations).

I can only think they meant no domestic cancellations in that streak. 42 discrete days is crazy.

No cancellations might indicate something good. But not necessarily.

mcogator wrote:

My DL flight, DL167 NRT-SIN on Nov 6 was cancelled. Does that not count on the 42 day streak, or did I misread it?

Delta wont considered it cancelled if it is delayed.. even if it is delayed for 30 hours or so, still not a cancel. Delta also wont consider it cancelled if an extra section picks up the flight.

PSU.DTW.SCE wrote:

Everytime someone posts these PR releases it always turns into a predictable "haters going to hate" thread. It is what it is....
I do agree that sometimes these PR releases are a bit cringe-worthy, since they are sort of like stating the obvious, but I would expect an airline's PR and marketing department to seize the opportunity to push out positive stories.

Instead of having an intelligent conversation about what they are doing operationally or what factors led to this it turns into a bash-fest for whatever airline is mentioned.
A.net is worse than some of the college football forums I follow in terms of being able to have semi-rational, objective, or intelligent posts.

A few points:
1) There was favorable weather for the vast majority of the continental United States over the entire Thanksgiving holiday weekend, in particular no significant weather events impacting any of the major hubs or the big East Coast cities. Unlike other years this was a big contributor into having high on-time and completion factors

2) There are generally ample spare aircraft at this time of the year as Thanksgiving weekend operates at a level below that of peak summer schedule, but tends to have very different customer mix skewing toward infrequent travelers and virtual no business travel.

3) A completion despite a long delay is in most cases a better outcome than a cancellation since the capacity is still flown and the aircraft and crew is still getting to its downline destination.

That's interesting, so airlines do not add flights for the week of Thankgiving? Some of the busiest travel days of the year? I understand Thursday, Friday and Saturday having slack but not the days leading up to Wednesday and Sunday.

I agree, clear weather across the country contributed to all the airlines being able to take families to their destination and home again.

The weather was pretty decent across the country all weekend. I imagine pretty much everyone had good performance this year.

william wrote:

PSU.DTW.SCE wrote:

Everytime someone posts these PR releases it always turns into a predictable "haters going to hate" thread. It is what it is....
I do agree that sometimes these PR releases are a bit cringe-worthy, since they are sort of like stating the obvious, but I would expect an airline's PR and marketing department to seize the opportunity to push out positive stories.

Instead of having an intelligent conversation about what they are doing operationally or what factors led to this it turns into a bash-fest for whatever airline is mentioned.
A.net is worse than some of the college football forums I follow in terms of being able to have semi-rational, objective, or intelligent posts.

A few points:
1) There was favorable weather for the vast majority of the continental United States over the entire Thanksgiving holiday weekend, in particular no significant weather events impacting any of the major hubs or the big East Coast cities. Unlike other years this was a big contributor into having high on-time and completion factors

2) There are generally ample spare aircraft at this time of the year as Thanksgiving weekend operates at a level below that of peak summer schedule, but tends to have very different customer mix skewing toward infrequent travelers and virtual no business travel.

3) A completion despite a long delay is in most cases a better outcome than a cancellation since the capacity is still flown and the aircraft and crew is still getting to its downline destination.

That's interesting, so airlines do not add flights for the week of Thankgiving? Some of the busiest travel days of the year? I understand Thursday, Friday and Saturday having slack but not the days leading up to Wednesday and Sunday.

I agree, clear weather across the country contributed to all the airlines being able to take families to their destination and home again.

They add fights. But it's not like running a full summer schedule. Thank week you lose almost all of the business traffic, so there is room. That time before thanksgiving is one of the slowest of the whole year.

william wrote:

That's interesting, so airlines do not add flights for the week of Thankgiving? Some of the busiest travel days of the year? I understand Thursday, Friday and Saturday having slack but not the days leading up to Wednesday and Sunday.

I agree, clear weather across the country contributed to all the airlines being able to take families to their destination and home again.

Its actually kind of a media-driven myth that the Thanksgiving period is the busiest air travel days of the year. Its fits the media narrative about traveling for Thanksgiving and its confounded with that Thanksgiving may be the busiest travel period of the year when looking at all modes, its not necessarily that way for air travel.

For some airlines and some airports, yet it may be depending on their traffic mix and other factors. Where as for other it is not.

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2017/11/22/ ... days-year/
https://qz.com/302815/the-worst-days-to ... us-ranked/

For Delta, their busiest travel days are typically Fridays in July and August where they have the highest number of flights and passengers and have previously set their single-day passenger records in the past.

Thanksgiving is a bit unique as Wednesday prior is a busy day, as is the Saturday after, and peaks with the Sunday after Thanksgiving. The other days surrounding are a bit lighter, and Thursday and Friday are very light travel days.

Part of this is that the passenger mix and purpose of trips is much different as business travel is virtually non-existant during Thanksgiving week versus in the middle of summer where there is strong demand for business, leisure, and personal travel at the same times. Thankgiving week also tends to be much lighter on the international TATL and particularly TPAC travel. DL for example pulled back and did not operate some TPAC and TATL flights over Thanksgiving since their is lighter demand, particularly business related.

Thus DL has slack in the fleet around Thanksgiving and uses some of their International widebodies for domestic flights to add capacity on the busy travel days.

alasizon wrote:

flymco753 wrote:

There were CRJ-700s loading with 65-75 bags, and if you have ever seen bin 2 (rear) of a DL Connection -700 it’s very small due to the fact that they moved the bathroom back to put in more seats. -900s were probably averaging 80-95 bags too on the heaviest flights.

65-75 & 80-95 seems quite low actually (even more so if that includes planeside bags). We had probably about 40-50% of CR9 flights with 100+ checked plus planeside over the weekend.

That was just what was put in Bin 2nof a -700 and bin 3 of a -900, there were easily up to 35-40 pink tags.

reltney wrote:

Super80Fan wrote:

Are we supposed to congratulate airlines for doing what they are supposed to do?

The airline was patting the employees on the back. Don't you wish your company did that. I know you do. I worked for AA and my brother still does. Unless AA isn't kicking employees in the teeth, they have nothing nice to say. Irrefutable.

The naysayers blow it out of proportion on airliners.net and turn everything into something it isn't. Many don't realize don't have to click on the thread. Best part about the naysayers is they have never worked for an airline.

No worries.

No but I have flown said airline and the picture isn't nearly as pretty as they make it out to be from a customer stand point.

Newbiepilot wrote:

COSPN wrote:

How do they do it ?? Spare standby aircraft ??

Delta does tend to have a low cancellation rate. Here are the latest numbers in this report

https://www.transportation.gov/sites/do ... eratcr.pdf

The cancellation free discussion is a bit unusual. Delta has a great reliable operation, especially for a US carrier. The blow airlines like Spirit who are the cancellation leader out of the water. They are no where near the reliability of some of the top performing airlines in Asia like ANA/JAL etc. Top reliability requires spare aircraft, large spare part inventory, significant maintenance capability across the network and the ability to limit deferred maintenance items to an absolute minimum. Delta does a pretty good job at that, but the cancel free numbers are a bit misleading. Delta has some long delays and some times the lack of cancellations doesn't always make sense when scrutinized. For example Delta may delay a flight 24 hours whereas United or American may have cancelled the flight and issued a new flight number for the recovery flight. Completion factor metrics can get a bit confusing. I personally remember scratching my head one day while looking at the departure boards during bad weather and saw that Delta had delayed some flights 6-18 hours from the prior day and kept the same flight numbers instead of cancelling. It is an airline decision and sometimes you see Delta delaying a flight whereas another may have cancelled and replaced it.

Every airline is different and the DOT statistics and SPEC 2000 reliability data is fairly good at creating some consistency, but it isn't perfect. The differences between airlines reporting strategies can let conversations get a little bombastic based on prejudice. It's even more interesting to go to airline industry meetings to see representatives from the airlines discuss it.

Again a better measure since Delta is in the a service industry is the percentage of passenger that get to their destination on time.

Newbiepilot wrote:

Delta has a great reliable operation, especially for a US carrier. The blow airlines like Spirit who are the cancellation leader out of the water. They are no where near the reliability of some of the top performing airlines in Asia like ANA/JAL etc.

Really? Based on flightstats.com, for ALL flights (i.e., including connection carriers), it doesnt look like Delta is 'nowhere near the reliability' of ANA/JAL...

October 2017:
On-time:
Delta 86.9%
JAL 84.7%
ANA 81.9%

Completion:
Delta 99.3%
JAL 98.0%
ANA 97.96%

September 2017:
On-time:
Delta 89.1%
JAL 87.7%
ANA 84.2%

Completion:
JAL 98.37%
Delta 98.02%
ANA 97.94%

August 2017:
On-time:
Delta 84.7%
JAL 83.2%
ANA 80.7%

Completion:
ANA 98.9%
Delta 98.8%
JAL 98.5%

twinotter wrote:

Jetblue also had zero cancellations over the holiday period. Apparently, their lavatories work just as well as Delta's when there aren't any ATC programs in the Northeast.

Yes, a certain fanboy likes to find fault with JetBlue's strategic decisions (more seats). What matters is favorable weather kept the Airlines out of the news. It was traffic instead.

Kudos to DL.

Lightsaber

KLM...how do you know what DL is like these days? You have such utter hatred for them..lol I cant imagine you fly them or have flown them recently..

toobz wrote:

KLM...how do you know what DL is like these days? You have such utter hatred for them..lol I cant imagine you fly them or have flown them recently..

^This. Reminds me of a family member of mine who flies maybe 4 times a year who just dumps on DL because they had a cancellation like 6 years ago, according to them Delta is garbage compared to Southwest and I am a fool for flying DL.

30 segments so far this year on DL out of ATL with 6 more to go and not single flight to date was a DL related delay, yes there was that one weather related delay due to thunderstorms in Atlanta but only was ~3 hours behind schedule on that one.

45 segments on DL year-to-date:
11 >15 minutes early (best was 42 minutes early)
20 0-14 minutes early
9 0-14 minutes late
5 > 15 minutes late (worst was 63 minutes late; on the day of the ATL t-storms & IT meltdown in April)

The question isn't whether Delta is a reliable airline or not (it is). The annoyance is that the OP (again) boasted about Delta doing something special and better when they didn't. Every U.S. airline posted excellent performance numbers over the Thanksgiving holiday -- because there was good weather. Jetblue, the OP's nemesis, had no cancellations just like Delta.

And so it goes.

The press release said

Delta Air Lines flew more than 2.35 million customers on nearly 23,000 flights during the holiday period from Wednesday to Sunday without a single cancellation anywhere across its global operation

Wednesday Nov 22 to Sunday Nov 26. Nov 9 does not count.

jagraham wrote:

The press release said

Delta Air Lines flew more than 2.35 million customers on nearly 23,000 flights during the holiday period from Wednesday to Sunday without a single cancellation anywhere across its global operation

Wednesday Nov 22 to Sunday Nov 26. Nov 9 does not count.

Not sure why you conveniently left out the following:

jumbojet wrote:

Delta Air Lines flew more than 2.35 million customers on nearly 23,000 flights during the holiday period from Wednesday to Sunday without a single cancellation anywhere across its global operation and an on-time rate of 92.7 percent.1
The strong operational performance during one of the busiest travel periods of the year continues an 11-day streak without a mainline or Delta Connection regional flight cancellation and a more than 42-day streak on the mainline, eclipsing a previous airline record by more than 10 days

November 9 is included in the 42 days prior to the 26th

mcogator wrote:

My DL flight, DL167 NRT-SIN on Nov 6 was cancelled. Does that not count on the 42 day streak, or did I misread it?

Your flight wasn't really cancelled.

william wrote:

That's interesting, so airlines do not add flights for the week of Thankgiving? Some of the busiest travel days of the year? I understand Thursday, Friday and Saturday having slack but not the days leading up to Wednesday and Sunday.

I agree, clear weather across the country contributed to all the airlines being able to take families to their destination and home again.

I believe that AA added some extra flights - they had a very late bank of flights operating on Sunday evening at CLT with at least two dozen post-midnight departures. Admirals "C" Club stayed open until midnight instead of the normal 10:00 pm or 10:15. My flight to DTW departed at 12:15 and arrived DTW at around 2:00 am.

Super80Fan wrote:

INFINITI329 wrote:

reltney wrote:

The airline was patting the employees on the back. Don't you wish your company did that. I know you do. I worked for AA and my brother still does. Unless AA isn't kicking employees in the teeth, they have nothing nice to say. Irrefutable.

I think the fact that DL made it into pr release muddies those waters. If it was solely for employee appreciation I feel like it would be delivered internally only not via their media room. Even though it may have started as that, DL definitely used this time to chest thump to everyone else.

Absolutely agree 100%, this should've been an internal memo. Like I said, I don't congratulate and praise airlines for doing what I pay them to do.

I agree 100000%