Well, Delta… I’ve stuck with you as long as I could, but, as the old country song goes, you’ve got to know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em.
A few years ago I realized that my life would involve more air travel than it had in the past, so I picked one airline for my travels so I would maximize mileage points. I picked Delta. Today I have been questioning that choice. I stuck with Delta when you absorbed Northwest airlines and started putting those horrible Boeing 757’s on Hawaii routes. Talk about a misery maker! One skinny aisle with 3 cramped seats on either side with leg room only fit for tiny people. There are no flights from Hawaii shorter than about 5 hours, and 5 hours on a 757 is torture. I stuck with you when you started charging baggage fees, and even got a Delta branded Amex card to help avoid those fees. I defended you when you took a bad P.R. hit for stupidly charging returning service people for their military gear bags. I have never been offered a courtesy upgrade, even on half-empty flights. I opted for Delta SkyMiles on all my Korean Air flights because I hoped to accumulate more SkyMiles and use them when I needed them.Well, now I need them, and I feel embarrassed by my naive loyalty. My son and his wife are expecting our first grandchild next month, and my wife and I really want to be in Alabama when the baby is born. It’s the big deal for which we hoped to cash in miles for the flights. When we discovered they were expecting I checked the SkyMiles mileage requirements and read this:
I think pretty much everyone who sees that chart would understand it to say that an Economy Class flight from Hawaii to the Continental U.S. can be obtained for a range between 20,000 SkyMiles and 45,000 SkyMiles… after all, it does say “Low” and “High” above those numbers.
Imagine my dismay when I attempted to use my 82,000+ miles to book 2 tickets to Atlanta and discovered that ONE ticket would cost me 77,500 miles! So what happened to a range between a low of 20,000 SkyMiles and a high of 45,000 SkyMiles? I was referred to the fine print, written in obfuscatory lawyerly language apparently designed to conceal the reality. Read this and see if you see “don’t count on that chart above, because it is totally meaningless, and you will have to cash in a LOT more miles than it says, but if we say that outright nobody will sign up.”
My future flights — and they are becoming more frequent — will not be booked with a preference for Delta because there’s no significant reason to be a loyal to an airline with unclear, evasive rules.