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Delta Update

By John Tabin on 6.24.11 @ 1:30PM

Brian Bolduc at National Review gets a new statement from a Delta spokesman regarding the deal with Saudi Arabian Airlines that I discussed last night (emphasis added):

Delta Air Lines does not discriminate nor do we condone discrimination against any of our customers in regards to age, race, nationality, religion, or gender.

Delta does not operate service to Saudi Arabia and does not codeshare with any airline that serves that country. Delta does not intend to codeshare or share reciprocal benefits, such as frequent flier benefits, with Saudi Arabian Airlines, which we have confirmed with SkyTeam, an Amsterdam-based 14-member global airline alliance.

Delta's only agreement with Saudi Arabian Airlines is a standard industry interline agreement, which allows passengers to book tickets on multiple carriers, similar to the standard interline agreements American Airlines, US Airways and Alaska Airlines have with Saudi Arabian Airlines.

All of the three global airline alliances - Star, which includes United Airlines; oneworld, which includes American Airlines, and SkyTeam, which includes Delta - have members that fly to Saudi Arabia and are subject to that country's rules governing entry.

The last paragraph is a red herring -- the oneworld and Star Alliance members that fly to Saudi Arabia are not owned by the Saudi government -- but the part I've bolded is significant. Delta's frequent flier program, SkyMiles, is the top advertised benefit of flying SkyTeam member airlines. Cutting SAA out of that program is a welcome move. Good for Delta.

View all comments (6) | Leave a comment

carly| 6.24.11 @ 2:45PM

Maybe Delta should not be part of this “partnership” that is not what freedom is all about and last time I checked Delta is an American corporation. It already has plenty to work on. How much more will people take from Delta. First they try to charge returning soldiers for their bags, then one of their employees urinates on a passenger’s luggage and now this. If airlines continue to run their business as they did in the last couple of weeks they will be lucky to be around next year. The airline industry needs to learn how to run a service based business. Drive the passengers away and you have no business. I just read that the airline industry ranked worst of all industries. Beyond the endless fees, in the last week we heard that airlines did not do proper drug testing, kicked people off for cloth they wore and for being disabled, did not check that employees are legal aliens and tortured us with system crashes. I found a great site to your travel adventures at airlineslodgingetc.com

RNB| 6.24.11 @ 2:46PM

"The last paragraph is a red herring -- the oneworld and Star Alliance members that fly to Saudi Arabia are not owned by the Saudi government..." Where did the last paragraph say that either oneworld or Star Alliance was owned by the SA government? All it said was that airline joint ventures -- like individual airlines -- are subject to the destination country's entry rules. And the bolded section did not say that Delta had 'cut' Saudi Arabian Airlines out of any benefits programs; they never part of the interline agreement Delta has with SAA.

Do you understand any part of this story?