The customer, not anet armchair ceo’s, will decide if they perceive the new service concept to be innovative, pleasant, and a cut above.

Net promoter score increases have been in the double digits.

Check back next spring after Delta’s had the chance to gather data and crews become familiar with the service and delivery. Please accept our apologies in advance should we be out of your choice, crow, when we reach your seat.

global1 wrote:

The customer, not anet armchair ceo’s, will decide if they perceive the new service concept to be innovative, pleasant, and a cut above.

Net promoter score increases have been in the double digits.

Check back next spring after Delta’s had the chance to gather data and crews become familiar with the service and delivery. Please accept our apologies in advance should we be out of your choice, crow, when we reach your seat.

I wish Delta the best, I hope their NPS scores go through the roof. If customers perceive the new service delivery as an upgrade, that's all that really matters. I was just trying to point out how trivial the changes really are and how when you take a closer look, customers are actually receiving less. If a sparkly bellini distracts customers from the fact that they are getting less, Delta is doing an excellent job and in no way can I fault them for it.

global1 wrote:

The customer, not anet armchair ceo’s, will decide if they perceive the new service concept to be innovative, pleasant, and a cut above.

Net promoter score increases have been in the double digits.

Check back next spring after Delta’s had the chance to gather data and crews become familiar with the service and delivery. Please accept our apologies in advance should we be out of your choice, crow, when we reach your seat.

There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal recently about the dubious management fad of NPS.

It is based on a single question and described by its inventor as bogus and there’s nothing to show a correlation with profits or repeat business.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubiou ... 1557932084

SuseJ772 wrote:

I just flew Korean A380 from JFK to ICN and then flew DL A359 from ICN-ATL. This was in Main Cabin, and by far, DL was better. Better food. Better alcohol. Better FAs. Better in flight entertainment.

Even compared to EK the year before going to MCO-DXB-MLE, I’d say it is neck and neck economy products (EK better in some. DL better in others).

How funny, I took a similar itinerary some time ago, though my Delta flight was via Detroit. I may be biased, but the Delta flight would be leagues ahead if it weren't for that A380, I find it to be slightly better than the A350, but it was still a better overall experience even if I prefer the superjumbo

I think DL has become by a mile the best airline in the US domestically and internationally. I know I’m not the only one who notices. The general non aviation geek public loves to discuss their flight experiences and I constantly hear friends family and coworkers rave about Delta where as years ago the conversation was JetBlue is great, everything else sucks, Spirit is horrible but worth enduring for the money, and AA is shameful. Now the conversation has shifted to JetBlue is alright, but Delta has better IFE and service. The rest still suck. Of course this is a snap shot of a small percent of BOS based folks so take it with a grain of salt but I see similar feelings here.

aeropix wrote:

kiowa wrote:

An improvement would be less cramped seating on delta.

Delta is one of the last remaining carriers offering 9 abreast on the 777, while the rest of the world has gone 10-abreast. They also have plenty of 7-abreast 767's and 8-abreast airbus so I think your complaint has no substance whatsoever. They are the economy space leader already.

Cathay Pacific offers 8 abreast on the 777 in Y+. Pure heaven without the insane J prices.

Kno wrote:

I think DL has become by a mile the best airline in the US domestically and internationally. I know I’m not the only one who notices. The general non aviation geek public loves to discuss their flight experiences and I constantly hear friends family and coworkers rave about Delta where as years ago the conversation was JetBlue is great, everything else sucks, Spirit is horrible but worth enduring for the money, and AA is shameful. Now the conversation has shifted to JetBlue is alright, but Delta has better IFE and service. The rest still suck. Of course this is a snap shot of a small percent of BOS based folks so take it with a grain of salt but I see similar feelings here.

Delta makes a lot of money, they invest it in their people, customers, and facilities. Whereas AA has to keep playing catch-up.

Launch date was yesterday.

If anyone has experienced it first hand yet, share your thoughts.

It’s expected that the first 1-2 months will be a learning curve for cabin crew.

Thanks

It takes more than an hour to get food. They need to scrap that welcome alcoholic beverage.

https://news.delta.com/delta-debuts-ind ... experience

Good to see DL continuing to upgrade the Y experience.

What does this change for Comfort Plus customers, or is it the same on International?

Comfort+ is the same as main cabin, only with additional leg room and recline.

Detroit313 wrote:

It takes more than an hour to get food. They need to scrap that welcome alcoholic beverage.

What’s the rush ? It’s not like you’re going anywhere

Detroit313 wrote:

It takes more than an hour to get food. They need to scrap that welcome alcoholic beverage.

Is the regular cocktail service now gone? i.e. I can't have my scotch and soda anymore?

[twoid] moi[/twoid]

N717TW wrote:

Detroit313 wrote:

It takes more than an hour to get food. They need to scrap that welcome alcoholic beverage.

Is the regular cocktail service now gone? i.e. I can't have my scotch and soda anymore?

Still available with the first meal service, and after.

N717TW wrote:

Detroit313 wrote:

It takes more than an hour to get food. They need to scrap that welcome alcoholic beverage.

Is the regular cocktail service now gone? i.e. I can't have my scotch and soda anymore?

Delta used to have two full cocktail services. They now have a Bellini service and a full cocktail service. It's a rather clever cost-saving measure.

JAMBOJET wrote:

N717TW wrote:

Detroit313 wrote:

It takes more than an hour to get food. They need to scrap that welcome alcoholic beverage.

Is the regular cocktail service now gone? i.e. I can't have my scotch and soda anymore?

Delta used to have two full cocktail services. They now have a Bellini service and a full cocktail service. It's a rather clever cost-saving measure.

Exactly. This is a ploy to reduce costs and increase work for cabin crew while pretending it’s an upgrade.

If you think about it, it is a very efficient service. Less waste and it costs money. Flight attendants have to do way more work with the same staffing, but whatever.

The beverage cart with the dessert also have all cocktails available.

Prost wrote:

The beverage cart with the dessert also have all cocktails available.

That's still one less beverage service.

It’s a downgrade. No choice of pre-meal drinks. Less food. Nice work, Delta, in spinning it to look like an upgrade.

is it non stop service for the FAs on those flights? Sometimes I wonder if Spirit really does have the best thing going for their FAs. Roll a buy-only cart through once that very few people want. Very fast boarding and deplaning thanks to no bags. Hardly any trash. Sounds very easy.

I went through the service fro the first time last night on BOS-AMS (as did the crew as it was their first time as well) and I was underwhelmed. My biggest takeaway was how long it took. The dinner service was completed at 10:48 in the front of the Y cabin ... this is for a flight that took off at 8:05. The other take away was that the crew was doing a lot of work--as everything was being assembled on a cart. Most passengers didn't seem to know what to do with the placement and silverware kit and I didn't notice many people actually folding the placemat out as one. I also didn't find the food that much "enhanced" as the main dish was in the exact same foil container the old meal was in. The crew also seemed to struggle with the trash as the lack of trays now meant they were collecting a lot of trash as placemat, the dinner foil container the app dish, etc were all just being tossed into the trash.

I have to agree with the above poster.. "underwhelmed" is probably generous. I took a flight from ATL-LIM last night (probably one of the shortest routes that Delta flies with D1 at just over 6.5 hours) and noticed a few things:

• Service took forever. On this 6.5 hour flight, I don't think we actually finished dinner (dessert trash picked up) until right at 4 hours after takeoff. Perhaps this is fine on a daytime flight, but if it was a redeye I would have just been annoyed.
• The napkin / utensils / tablecloth combos came out in a separate round (along with water) which just took extra time and more time where I'm awkwardly responsible for stuff I don't need.
• No one knew what to do with the "tablecloth" (which looks nothing like a tablecloth). Flight attendants had to tell people to lay it out. I hate the real table cloths in F/D1 so this is just an annoyance to me.
• Perhaps psychological (it took so long to get food and eat that I was hungry again by the time we were done), but there seemed to be less food overall than before. I had to pick something up at the airport when we landed because I wasn't satisfied. My plus one has never finished a full airplane meal in her life she managed to finish this one which tells me that there was actually less food.
• The new plates are inferior to the old trays. The food containers slip and slide on the new plates very easily - I ended up having to pick up some of the containers in order to hold them in place. I was in C+ but with less arm-room further back it would have been a real challenge to eat.
• The new utensils look nice but seem.. less sturdy. I was having trouble picking up some of the green peas from my chicken marsala (which seemed to be more mashed potatoes than chicken marsala). This was aggravated by my point above (slippery plate with very little edge/lip to hold dishes in place). The "spoon" for the ice cream looked cute but wasn't really effective at scooping icecream.
• Flight attendants were very cranky about the new service - part of this I chock up to "change is hard" but they are definitely having to do more work.
  I honestly never paid attention to drink service on the old flights, but this definitely felt like fewer drink runs than before (perhaps again because of how long service took). Even if not formally advertised, I feel like on previous flights in C+, flight attendants tended to walk the aisles a bit with a bottle of wine or ask if we needed anything else after dinner (outside of the formal service) - in this case I think they were so tired from the 4 hour marathon service this definitely didn't happen.

I agree with the assessment that the old service was superior. Perhaps slightly less 'fancy' looking, but far more functional. If I am doing a redeye in Y at this point (fortunately increasingly rare for me) I would rather just skip dinner and try to catch extra sleep than go through this 4 hour marathon meal. I am going to guess that FAs will get more proficient with the new service over time, but it is clearly designed to be slower than the old one (among other things, assembling each plate individually takes much longer than throwing someone a tray).

The promotional piece that Delta put out about the new service described it as the most-tested service change in Delta's history. I wonder why the hiccups weren't ironed out during all the testing. The replacement of the pre-meal bar service with a bellini or nothing, and a longer service where you get less food is quite a downgrade.

I’m just happy Delta has been offering reasonable first class airfares on domestic flights to popular demand costal destinations. Thankfully, I only fly a couple of times per month these days, as platinum status and frequent flyer programs are all but worthless these days. I usually book non-refundable airfare 1 to 2 weeks in advance, and $500 to $850 r/t from MSP is a reasonable price for the product offered.

Trip wrote:

The promotional piece that Delta put out about the new service described it as the most-tested service change in Delta's history. I wonder why the hiccups weren't ironed out during all the testing. The replacement of the pre-meal bar service with a bellini or nothing, and a longer service where you get less food is quite a downgrade.

https://news.delta.com/welcome-cocktails-hot-towel-service-bistro-style-dining-delta-debut-wholly-reinvented-international

https://news.delta.com/delta-debuts-industry-leading-international-main-cabin-experience

The amount of testing is amazing.
- More than 1200 flights
- 14,000 hours of flight time
- 1800 customer surveys
- 24 FA’s on the design team

Granted implementation across the network with thousands of FA’s will be bumpy. But 3-4 hours to get through this service is unbelievable and unacceptable.

I think most Y passengers want:
- Beverage cart with a package of nibbles
- Followed by the dinner cart three feet behind offering a few choices with appetizer, salad, entree and dessert served on one tray
- Followed by FA twenty feet behind walking through with water and wine refills
- Tray table cleaned up within 45 minutes of delivery

When serving the masses, a few principles should be applied:
- Make everything incredibly simple
- Keep choices sensible
- Avoid cutesy and funky

Observe how passengers, especially those for whom English is not their first language and/or are from different cultures, slow down the beverage cart vs a simple water service. Now add appetizer choices, entree choices, a funky placemat that’s not intuitive and “where is my dessert?” No wonder it takes so long.

But kudos to Delta for trying. I’m sure the financial parameters with the desire to make the service differentiated and premium feeling were challenging to the design team. Perhaps lessons will be learned from this and applied in the future.

millionsofmiles wrote:

JAMBOJET wrote:

N717TW wrote:

Is the regular cocktail service now gone? i.e. I can't have my scotch and soda anymore?

Delta used to have two full cocktail services. They now have a Bellini service and a full cocktail service. It's a rather clever cost-saving measure.

Exactly. This is a ploy to reduce costs and increase work for cabin crew while pretending it’s an upgrade.

Where are the cost savings?
- One less beverage cart service?
- Less food?
- No meal tray to purchase and clean?
- Less service items to purchase?

Knowing how, just various culture groups, in the different parts of the US don’t seem to “get it,” (“it”being the organization of air travel with a meal service) personally I would be amazed if this system of service Delta is using would work across ALL the regions of the world.

Many of the infrequent travelers or those strictly used to the likes of that big Ochre bluish and orange carrier and used to having crackers (formally honey-roast peanuts) chucked at them have no idea what a meal service or even civilized seat assigned travel entails. Yes I am sure you would like a beer and a whisky and coke, but this is just the meal cart.

“Oh I will just have a coke then!”

KlimaBXsst wrote:

Knowing how, just various culture groups, in the different parts of the US don’t seem to “get it,” (“it”being the organization of air travel with a meal service) personally I would be amazed if this system of service Delta is using would work across ALL the regions of the world.

Many of the infrequent travelers or those strictly used to the likes of that big Ochre bluish and orange carrier and used to having crackers (formally honey-roast peanuts) chucked at them have no idea what a meal service or even civilized seat assigned travel entails. Yes I am sure you would like a beer and a whisky and coke, but this is just the meal cart.

“Oh I will just have a coke then!”

Passenger: Pepsi
FA: We don’t have Pepsi. Would you like Coke?
Passenger: So you don’t have Pepsi?
FA: Sorry. We only have Coca-Cola products. They are listed on page 122 of the inflight magazine.
Passenger: Oh, OK. I’ll take a Diet Pepsi then.
FA: Sir. I’m sorry. We only have Coca-Cola products.
Passenger: Oh. That includes diet too?
FA: Yes sir. I’m sorry. Would you like to chose something else?
Passenger: I’ll just have orange juice then.

Times 30% of the passengers on the plane while all others try to wait patiently.

I flew ATL-HNL in the last couple of days. I did a big miles drop on this trip, so I was in D1, not main cabin. But I was talking with the flight attendants, and two of the three bid off of international to avoid working the new service (I guess they haven't phased it in on HNL yet). They all had a very positive attitude and did not think that it would necessarily be a long-term problem. But they said they wanted to avoid the transition period, and all were senior enough to do so.

For the other posters above who asked about cost savings, the savings is in having flight attendants do the "tray" setup rather than workers in the flight kitchen. Delta did not increase flight attendant staffing for this change. By transferring setup work from the flight kitchen to flight attendants and then not increasing flight attendant staffing, they get the same amount of work done with fewer people.

The big question will be about how flight attendants feel about an increase in the amount of work without a corresponding increase in pay during a period when the company's margins are the widest in history.

questions wrote:

Passenger: Pepsi
FA: We don’t have Pepsi. Would you like Coke?
Passenger: So you don’t have Pepsi?
FA: Sorry. We only have Coca-Cola products. They are listed on page 122 of the inflight magazine.
Passenger: Oh, OK. I’ll take a Diet Pepsi then.
FA: Sir. I’m sorry. We only have Coca-Cola products.
Passenger: Oh. That includes diet too?
FA: Yes sir. I’m sorry. Would you like to chose something else?
Passenger: I’ll just have orange juice then.

Times 30% of the passengers on the plane while all others try to wait patiently.

Passenger: I’ll just have a Tropicana orange juice then.
FA: Sir. I’m sorry. We only have Coca-Cola products. Would you like Minute Maid?

TW870 wrote:

The big question will be about how flight attendants feel about an increase in the amount of work without a corresponding increase in pay during a period when the company's margins are the widest in history.

That's an interesting remark. Years ago, Herb Kelleher - perhaps with a bit of humor - suggested letting FAs keep the money from alcohol sales. (Forgive me if I don't get the quote exactly.) It will keep them (the FAs) in the aisle, and solicitous.

FAs are on board for safety and service. They don't get paid a la carte. 'Oh, we're adding a mint service. You'll get paid an extra $4/hour.' NOT.

After everybody has seen the service and work load with the kinks worked out, senior people not wanting to do the service will bid away. DL can see if that happens in meaningful numbers.

EBiafore99 wrote:

TransWorldOne wrote:

Remember that UA moved to this concept a couple of years ago. However, when they announced it, they got rid of the mid-flight snack on longer flights and replaced it with purchased snack boxes. It went over so well that they put the mid-flight snack back on the longer flights. .

Is that a sarcastic comment on UA's removal of purchased snack boxes ? I flew ULH on economy recently on UA and there was no purchase option and they did serve a mid flight snack (however it was given right after the meal along with water), and also had snacks in the galley.

millionsofmiles wrote:

It’s a downgrade. No choice of pre-meal drinks. Less food. Nice work, Delta, in spinning it to look like an upgrade.

Sounds like you still have 2 full beverage services.

jrkmsp wrote:

[twoid] moi[/twoid]

N717TW wrote:

Detroit313 wrote:

It takes more than an hour to get food. They need to scrap that welcome alcoholic beverage.

Is the regular cocktail service now gone? i.e. I can't have my scotch and soda anymore?

Still available with the first meal service, and after.

KlimaBXsst wrote:

Knowing how, just various culture groups, in the different parts of the US don’t seem to “get it,” (“it”being the organization of air travel with a meal service) personally I would be amazed if this system of service Delta is using would work across ALL the regions of the world.

Many of the infrequent travelers or those strictly used to the likes of that big Ochre bluish and orange carrier and used to having crackers (formally honey-roast peanuts) chucked at them have no idea what a meal service or even civilized seat assigned travel entails. Yes I am sure you would like a beer and a whisky and coke, but this is just the meal cart.

“Oh I will just have a coke then!”

It's quite interesting to hear someone say that.

I have a friend who is a FA at CX and whenever he flies US sectors, he is amused that people always attempt to pull out credit cards to pay for food and beverages. I think most Americans likely believe that because the US3 largely discontinued meal service domestically, they did it internationally as well and most foreign carriers followed suit.

Won't be long before DL is out of Skyteam and doing it's own thing like CZ. After all, most Skyteam carriers (exceptions granted) appear not to be interested in a pleasant travelling experience for the economy traveler or, for that matter, the business traveler - a case of squeeze it hard at both ends and we meet in the muddle / middle, perhaps? DL are pushing the boat out and redefining expectations. I think this is good. Good on them.

hohd wrote:

EBiafore99 wrote:

TransWorldOne wrote:

Remember that UA moved to this concept a couple of years ago. However, when they announced it, they got rid of the mid-flight snack on longer flights and replaced it with purchased snack boxes. It went over so well that they put the mid-flight snack back on the longer flights. .

Is that a sarcastic comment on UA's removal of purchased snack boxes ? I flew ULH on economy recently on UA and there was no purchase option and they did serve a mid flight snack (however it was given right after the meal along with water), and also had snacks in the galley.

This is not a sarcastic comment. My point was simply what UA did when they revamped their international meal service. When UA initially revamped their international meal service, they removed the complimentary mid-flight snack and replaced it with snack boxes that could be purchased. It must not have well received because UA went back to the complimentary mid-flight snack (I think the revamp was under Smisek and the return of complimentary mid-flight snacks was under Oscar).