Thank you midwesterners . . .

[ritaxis]

I had thught I had heard about Delta airlines doing bad things in the past, but when I went to buy tickets for us earlier in the year (and I had to buy three sets of intercontinental flights: 2 roundtrips SF-Prague, 1 roundtrip Prague-Accra, and 1 roundtrip Prague-SF -- this may not seem like a lot to some people, which amounts to about a third of my income for 2011, not counting mysterious legacies that keep popping up suspiciously) I could not find anything when I googled, so I had decided I must have remembered wrongly. It turns out I googled wrongly, not knowingf exactly what to ask for, and completely failed to find the records of Delta's swalling of Northwestern and their bad labor policy.

This is where you kind of have to know what you're looking for to find thngs. Googling "delta labor policy" reveals on the first page a slew of articles about flying pregnant, an attack on Harry Reid by the US Chamber of Commerce, and three hits for Delta's PR machine including their "applauding" a decision by a House committee to investigate the Labor Board. But this time, knowing for sure that there was something to look for, I changed up the words, and "Delta labor violations" turns out to be an overwhelmingly productive search.

Thanks, Pamela and Mike!

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Helpful tip: Delta are in a multi-airline alliance called Sky Team. Other Sky Team members include Air France/KLM (one airline, two brands), Alitalia, and so on.

I'm in the AF/KLM frequent flyer scheme, so I get to compare. AF are head and shoulders better/more comfortable on the trans-Atlantic flights, followed by KLM, with Delta in a distant third place -- for example, Delta's premium economy class is economy plus 5 extra inches of legroom, while AF's is a mini-version of business class. Again: Delta charge for alcohol, with AF/KLM it's free, even in economy. Oh, and AF/KLM have way better labour relations due to, er, French and Dutch labour laws.

Finally, if you go to www.airfrance.com or www.klm.com (hint) and book from a US airport to an EU one, you'll be offered feeder flights on Delta, but the long haul sector on the airline you picked. It's pretty much the same routing Delta would offer, at the same price (give or take 5-50 bucks), but you're spending most of the money with an airline that Isn't Shit, and getting better service to boot.

Oh, and Air France fly direct from SFO to Paris CDG (a daily A340 long haul), and frequent short-haul connections to Prague. Whereas I suspect Delta would book you via a stop-over in Atlanta ...

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

We've been using the Delta-Sky Team route as the easiest and cheapest alternative we could find. I had not thought of starting with Air France (or I think I did try that once and didn't find a flight and never tried it again).

A question you won't necessarily be able to answer -- can I avoid Delta while being a US customer of other Sky Team airlines?

In general, the transatlantic part of the flight has usually been with KLM. The last leg to Prague tends to be on Czech Air. which has been fine with me. The student tends to fly into any country but Czech Republic and take a bus or train into Prague. He has become a regular contributor to Sleeping in Airports (http://www.sleepinginairports.net/).

When he is done, and has become a professional man, he might get to fly on comfortable planes that leave at convenient times. . . I hope so, since he plans a peripatetic career. And also, I hope he can buy me tickets to whatever place he happens t be in at the time.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

A question you won't necessarily be able to answer -- can I avoid Delta while being a US customer of other Sky Team airlines?

Yes ... if you're careful. You need to examine any flight your search turns up carefully. If it's in Sky Team it will be a codeshare -- that is, it may have a Delta flight number, along with KLM, Air France, and even Aeroflot flight numbers. What you're looking for is the airline that actually operates the flight. AF's online booking system lets you see this if you click on the tiny icon to show details of the flight before you buy it -- along with stuff like the type of airliner (so that you can then hit on SeatGuru.com to work out which seats to avoid selecting -- hint).

There may be some routes where Delta is unavoidable, but if your home airport is SFO you're in luck; it's a major international hub, and once you're out of the USA the chances of encountering a Delta flight are very low indeed.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

The international-hub thing would work better in my favor if I were going to Asia. Nonstops from SFO to Europe tend to be expensive or otherwise inconvenient. They tend to want to take us to Minneapolis, Atlanta or New York before hopping the Atlantic.

But with new information at my disposal, I'll do brand new searches when the time comes.