Delta Air Lines should have spent Monday basking in its No. 2 ranking in a yearly airline quality ranking, but the carrier was still trying to get passengers and their luggage to destinations following strong storms five days earlier. The Atlanta-based carrier which dominates traffic at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was finally moving at near full strength as the week started. Repairing the damage done to its image is likely to take a little longer.
Still, Dean Headley, one of the authors of an airline quality report and a professor at Wichita State University, said many passengers will forgive Delta quickly, especially among people who were not actually impacted by the delays. “That really was a small percentage of the people Delta will fly this year,” he said.
Passengers who were delayed for days may look for other carriers in the future, but many are likely to find Delta is the only airline going where they want to go, Headley said. The forgiveness will come from the fact that the delays were initially caused by weather. Delta, he said, compounded the issue by continuing to run some routes during the storms. The airline then ended up with planes and crews out of position. “It is kind of a cascading effect,” he said.
The timing also was bad as it hit during spring break when many passengers are connecting through Atlanta to Florida destinations.
An annual report issued jointly by Embry-Riddle University and Wichita State University generally gave Delta high marks, but passengers stranded for days because of spring storms probably didn’t care. The report, which covers calendar year 2016, uses Department of Transportation data and ranks airlines on four categories – on-time performance, denied boarding, mishandled baggage and customer complaints. According to the report, Delta showed improvements in all four areas last year, leading it to finish second behind Alaska Airlines. It was the carrier’s best finish in the rankings in the past decade.
The report was released Monday in Washington, D.C., and staffers headed to the presentation were impacted by Delta delays, Headley said. Some spent up to 36 hours in airports, and their luggage arrived another couple of days later. That, for regular airline passengers, is just part of flying, he said.
Delta did not escape without any criticism, though. “I think they have to do more to get information to the front lines,” he said. Twice during the delays colleagues were given boarding passes, only to arrive at the gate to find the plane was already full. “Telling truth to your customers during a delay is a good commodity.”
