

“In-cabin experience” is subjective, sure. Next? Delta’s In-Cabin (and Lounge) Experience Is Better They also make a lot more money than United and American do. Delta has fewer cancellations, better turnarounds and less customer service complaints. Empirically, Delta has an appreciably better on-time performance rate than United and American. carrier, warts and all – and give you a rebuttal on why SkyMiles aren’t all that bad. That’s what I’m here for: not to sugarcoat SkyMiles, but to tell you why Delta is still the best U.S. But if you, like me, place more value on the in-cabin and on-the-ground experience than on your mileage bank, Delta blows away the other legacy carriers.Įven Ben will begrudgingly admit that “they run a good operation,” but I don’t think you can get him to admit that they’re actually a great airline. If 100% of what you value in an airline is its mileage program, Ben is probably right: Delta can’t compete with American Airlines (for now – but that’s only because American hasn’t devalued its program… yet). What he sees is an airline running a mileage program that is not as lucrative as American’s, a program that requires significant spend (or use of a co-branded credit card) to reach elite levels and offers poor redemption availability on its own metal domestically.īen sees a program that won’t let you redeem miles for travel on partner airlines in international first class.īen sees a program that has made some customer-unfriendly changes within the last few years. There’s perhaps no airline that is quite as vilified by Ben as - you guessed it - Delta Air Lines. Nick is possibly the biggest Delta/SkyTeam apologist and funniest person I know, and I hope you find him interesting/amusing. For major airlines in North America, Cirium considered the top 20 percent based on ASKs, flights and seats.Posts from me are going to be a bit lighter over the next week as I travel to the Maldives. Some of you may remember my friend Nick, who reviewed JetBlue’s A321 Mint Class last August, along with his trip to South America.


For the global airlines category, the company considered the top 10 percent of all passenger airlines by capacity and volume criteria-available seat kilometers, flights and seats-and the airline also must serve at least three regions. airports to make the top 10 were Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport and Salt Lake City International Airport.Ĭirium used data from more than 600 global sources between June 1 and Dec. Tokyo's Haneda Airport had the highest percentage of on-time departures among international airports, followed by Sheremetyevo International Airport, Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport, Barcelona-El Prat Airport and Minneapolis-St. Globally, Delta came in fifth, with ANA taking the top spot with 95 percent of 2021 arrivals on time. Alaska Airlines, American Airlines and United Airlines followed, each with on-time arrival percentages at 80 percent or higher. Delta Air Lines had the best on-time performance among major North American carriers in 2021, with 87.8 percent of flights arriving within 15 minutes of the scheduled arrival time, according to airline data analytics supplier Cirium's annual report, released Wednesday.
