usdcaguy From United States of America, joined Jan 2004, 764 posts, RR: 2 Posted (4 months 2 weeks 5 days 17 hours ago) and read 1812 times:
Delta announced today through its travel agency portal that it will be ending ticketing and baggage agreements mid-February with Qatar, Turkish, Kuwait Airways and Aerosvit. Apparently, they are wanting to support their partners instead of accepting passengers and bags from these other carriers. Any thoughts on this strategy? Sounds like a great way to force people who have to travel from a DL stronghold to stay on them or their alliance partners unless they want to put up with these risks:
- No combined tickets, so no buying an itinerary involving both DL and, say, QR in the same PNR unless an agency manually tickets the itineraries separately, which basically eliminates buying combined itineraries through the OTAs like Expedia
- Even if someone travels on split tickets, DL or QR will refuse to check backs through to the final destination due to there being no agreement. It will be the responsibility of the passenger to reclaim bags and recheck at the transfer point.
- If something happens to the passenger's bags enroute on one carrier, say QR, they will have to file a claim with QR at the final destination stated on the QR ticket. If they forget to do this, they will not be able to file a claim with DL due to there being no agreement and will have to pick up the phone and call QR and hope they take a claim. Major risk and hassle.
- If the inbound flight of a connecting itinerary is late and the passenger misses the outbound, it will be as though they simply "missed their flight" with all the unintended consequences. Nobody will be legally obligated to lift a finger for them.
So, basically, I see this is a great win for DL, but for people who originate in DL strongholds who like to fly carriers such as QR and TK, they would have fewer options. This could also jeopardize QR or TK eventually serving the DL hubs as they would then miss out on most of the feed. Any thoughts on how this might play out? Is this a true loss for the carriers involved?
AeroWesty From United States of America, joined Oct 2004, 19254 posts, RR: 63 Reply 1, posted (4 months 2 weeks 5 days 17 hours ago) and read 1753 times:
Nothing nefarious, all of the major airlines are doing it. It has to do with the final round of DOT regulations going into effect this month:
usdcaguy From United States of America, joined Jan 2004, 764 posts, RR: 2 Reply 2, posted (4 months 2 weeks 5 days 17 hours ago) and read 1708 times:
Quoting AeroWesty (Reply 1):
Nothing nefarious, all of the major airlines are doing it. It has to do with the final round of DOT regulations going into effect this month:
Sorry, but what about these regulations has to do with DL's T&B agreements with these particular carriers? Why not choose others?
AeroWesty From United States of America, joined Oct 2004, 19254 posts, RR: 63 Reply 4, posted (4 months 2 weeks 5 days 17 hours ago) and read 1660 times:
AeroWesty From United States of America, joined Oct 2004, 19254 posts, RR: 63 Reply 5, posted (4 months 2 weeks 5 days 17 hours ago) and read 1582 times:
Okay, this is the original e-mail Delta sent out in October, for changes effective in January 2013 for separate tickets:
cv880 From United States of America, joined Mar 2007, 995 posts, RR: 2 Reply 6, posted (4 months 2 weeks 5 days 16 hours ago) and read 1411 times:
Quoting AeroWesty (Reply 5): Now they've expanded to snip out more airlines where they had interline agreements. It all goes back to originating with the new DOT rules, though.
I believe that it has to do with the absence of E-Ticketing agreements, as in the case of F9.
usdcaguy From United States of America, joined Jan 2004, 764 posts, RR: 2 Reply 7, posted (4 months 2 weeks 5 days 15 hours ago) and read 1159 times:
Actually, this has nothing to do with the DOT rules or e-ticketing agreements, which they have with these carriers. It has more to do with the fact that DL no longer wants to play North America taxi driver for the gulf carriers. I see this as a rather bold move; they're saying that you should be flying DL and its alliance partners, not those other guys.
yellowtail From United States of America, joined Jun 2005, 5276 posts, RR: 2 Reply 9, posted (4 months 2 weeks 5 days 15 hours ago) and read 1061 times:
Quoting usdcaguy (Thread starter): So, basically, I see this is a great win for DL, but for people who originate in DL strongholds who like to fly carriers such as QR and TK, they would have fewer options. This could also jeopardize QR or TK eventually serving the DL hubs as they would then miss out on most of the feed. Any thoughts on how this might play out? Is this a true loss for the carriers involved?
Also a way to uninspire TK and QR from starting ATL.
When in doubt, hold on to your altitude. No-one has ever collided with the sky.
LAXintl From United States of America, joined May 2000, 22236 posts, RR: 51 Reply 10, posted (4 months 2 weeks 5 days 15 hours ago) and read 1052 times:
Its a two sided knife, particularly in TKs case, so turning revenue away can hurt you in other areas.
Sure DL might not like to provide beneficial feed at JFK for TK, but DL's own IST service begs for added beyond traffic connectivity on the Turkey end, and its country sales team works hard to sell DL from places like Ankara, Izmir, Adana which dont have a choice but use TK on the domestic leg.
In case of Turkey, I think this makes the case for staying on TK or within the Star Alliance even more attractive for travellers now versus partial itineraries that made use of DL.
I suspect however TK knew this was coming - they signed up with JetBlue at JFK late last year.
From the desert to the sea, to all of Southern California
alfa164 From United States of America, joined Oct 2012, 105 posts, RR: 0 Reply 11, posted (4 months 2 weeks 5 days 12 hours ago) and read 643 times:
Back when NW was NW and DL was DL, AA announced a new flight from (somewhere) to Minneapolis; NW immediately retaliated by announcing a DFW-LGA flight (which never materialized; apparently cooler heads prevailed).
Now that QR has announced ATH-JFK - a long-time DL route - and TK is making noises about flying IST-ATL, I think I am seeing some of that old NW let-get-back-at-them-somehow at work here. Maybe some of the old NW management is flexing its muscles in Atlanta.
It might make more sense of DL and/or its partners actually flew to destinations within Turkey or throughout the Middle East, but they don't. With VV in bankrupcy and KU probably of minimal importance, they just got thrown in for good measure.
It will be interesting to see if it all sticks....
goldorak From France, joined Sep 2006, 1677 posts, RR: 3 Reply 12, posted (4 months 2 weeks 4 days 22 hours ago) and read 540 times:
The DL announcement is not clear about the following point : do they still accept to check bags on separate tickets within Skyteam airlines ? Example : 1st ticket MCI-ATL on DL and 2nd ticket ATL-AMS on KL.
Thanks
FreshSide3 From United States of America, joined Nov 2012, 213 posts, RR: 0 Reply 13, posted (4 months 2 weeks 4 days 18 hours ago) and read 523 times:
Quoting usdcaguy (Reply 8): Also, I believe VV was thrown in because they may have had clearinghouse payment issues because of their bankruptcy, but don't quote me on that.
Probably true. But you would think they would start flying to Kiev again.
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