|
"I was having a heck of a time using my Delta miles -- it's virtually impossible unless you want to burn 50,000 miles for a domestic flight. I looked up their partners, found just what I wanted, and I used my Delta miles on Alaska Airlines.
"I'm going to cancel my AMEX Delta SkyMiles card and be done with them." [Douglas]
"I'm guessing that if you cover the airline industry, you must have a sense of humor. Here's something you might enjoy." [Rob Mark - Editor, Jetwhine - "Aviation buzz and bold opinion"]
[The following letter to Delta chief Gerald Grinstein was copied to FrequentFlier.com. It concerns an email sent by Delta to many SkyMiles members, suggesting they contact their congressional representatives to express support for a new policy that would require corporate jet owners to pay a greater share of the costs for air traffic control services.]
"As a Delta Million Miler and a private pilot I take exception to the misleading mail Delta Air Lines has sent to their frequent flier community. I am afraid it has turned into an insult to the intelligence and checkbook of Delta's most valued customers.
"My own experience as well as the published statistics bear out the fact that General Aviation (of which the much-maligned corporate jets are an even smaller segment) only accounts for 4% of all plane movements at the nation's 10 largest airports.
"For commercial aviation and specifically Delta Air Lines to claim that airline flight delays are caused by General Aviation totally ignores issues like:
"1. Weather ---not caused by General Aviation
"2. Equipment -- most of my Delta flights were delayed because of equipment problems, mostly due to the age of the Delta fleet and the amount of maintenance (or lack thereof) it receives: I cannot imagine how General Aviation can have affected the maintenance state of the Delta fleet
"3. Lack of crew when equipment was available -- You probably agree that corporate aviation is NOT the reason why you have insufficient cockpit staff to man all flights within the FAA-mandated working hour limits when there are delays due to weather or equipment (see above)
"I believe it is not only disingenuous to blame corporate aviation for the biggest image problem of the commercial airlines (delays due to weather and their own mismanagement), but it also shows an amazing lack if business sense: after all, why should your customers trust you after they catch you lying so blatantly on such an issue?
"In addition, users of corporate and General Aviation rank very high among those who are your most frequent flyers on your - lucrative - international and intercontinental routes; why do you want to alienate those customers with deceptive and insulting statements like those in your mail?
"Commercial airlines, as the recipients of billions of dollars of federal bailout money at taxpayer's expense in the past decade, are surely the last ones that can complain about anyone receiving a "free ride" on the ATC system or anywhere else. The annual revenue from the tax proposed for general aviation is a very small fraction of the money the US airlines - including Delta -- received since the year 2000.
"Suggestions:
"a. Once the airlines have repaid their several billions of "free ride" to the taxpayer, they can raise the issue again and actually use the words "free ride" without looking like self-serving deceivers of the public and congress; this should take the base emotional component out of your argument
"b. Since the airlines seem to lack the integrity to make true statements to the public as to the real cause of delays, the federal reporting for the cause of airline delays should be tightened immediately, and those numbers should be published on the web on a monthly basis; this should take the deceptive component out of your argument
"c. If and when corporate aviation and VLJs are actually in the sky and turn out to be a burden for ATC (most will not because they fly direct, most will NOT fly to large airports, and many VLJs will not be corporate but privately owned), then the ATC financing issue should be revisited, but limited to deal with the incremental ATC effort caused by the VLJs starting from a baseline of the year 2007 (before VLJs); in other words, it would NOT be a shift of costs from airlines to corporate aviation, but would be concerned only with the incremental load on ATC that you painted so darkly in your mail; this would take the self-serving component out of your argument
"I'm afraid that leaves very little substance to your mail, other than a bitter aftertaste about your PR effort as such: I would have expected better (in this case less deception) from an airline that I have trusted for over 25 years and held up to others as a less corrupt example than most of Delta's competitors." [Klaus P.]
Until next week...
|
