Delta is in bad shape. I do hope they survive...I have a lot of miles left with them. More importantly, my family has many fond memories of various places they have taken us.
But here is just one example of a company which seems to be so focused on labor issues, that it has missed out on revenue, markets and customers.
Every major Indian offshore vendor gets over half its revenues from US companies. US IT and software execs going there. Many Indian consultants coming this way. A booming Indian middle class spending its new wealth at Disneyland and Times Square. This means a lot of traffic between the US and India.
Yet till recently Delta has had just one flight a day from Paris (and before that from Frankfurt) to India. It funnels traffic from US to the Paris hub, then onwards. Delta is considered the flagship US carrier to India having serviced that route for decades (it acquired Pan Am's route rights there). One flight on a 767 rated at 204 passengers each. In comparison BA and Air India have been averaging 6 flights a day from various Indian cities to London - most of them 747s rated each at 325+ passengers. Then you have other European carriers. So, Delta has less than 5% market share in a robust market. They just added another flight. Great - but India and Britain announced they are tripling flights to India, so Delta's market share shrinks even more!
In the mean time Delta has been arguing for over a decade its labor rates are out of whack and that is its major problem... its pilots and attendants make more than Southwest's but the average Delta plane holds 25% more passengers so on average it cannot be that badly off. Control your costs by all means, but jump all over busy routes like to India. Give us a decent product at a decent price - we will support you. Focus on your customers going forward, not the unions.
