Many things going on with DL the last 2 days. If you have a ticket on DL from May or June onwards, you may want to check schedule.

- They're grounding up to 20 mainline aircrafts and 25 RJs.

- MCO is severely cut back, losing about half the capacity. Will lose many routes and flights to non-hubs.

- Other routes are also being cut, or won't restart as previously scheduled, including BOS-LAS, ATL-OAK, ATL-EDI and many others.

- Some cities are eliminated altogether, including Atlantic City, Bellingham, Fargo, Islip, etc.

- Joining US/UA to charge $25 for 2nd checked bags.

Not allowing "holds" on FF mileage tickets reserved via phone...."Gimme that credit card,Stephen!!" is what i got yesterday...Whats next? Or as my perpetually optomistic FA friend with DL....WHAT'S LAST????

Oh, I forgot this one. Not official, but all the internal memos say so:

- 9 CRCs will close, and the B/E lounges at hubs will be consolidated to CRCs.

DL grounded this summer's LGA-BDA flights much to Bermuda's dismay.

Overall pretty significant cutbacks. And they're offering severance packages to 30,000 employees, which is over half of the workforce.

Just got this email from DL. Totally true, not joking.

It asks:

<i>Who knows what we'll think of next?</i>

Hm...

Here's another cut I've read:

- Skymiles award desk will no longer be 24 hours. So, if you want to get partner flights that open up at midnight 331 days out, you have to wait until the next morning.

Does anything really open up at midnight 331 days anymore? FWIW I only call during &quot;business hours&quot; and partner awards (for SQ and CI) was never open 24/7 (only something like 6am-11pm MT).

More troubling to me is the lack of award holds for phone reservations since you can't do AF/KL/OK/etc/etc/etc online. I supposed I could ask the CSR to hold on the phone while I do an instant transfer from MR, but sometimes I transfer from Marriott or Starwood which takes a few days

Wow, I'm glad I'm blowing through my FF miles for Biz Elite tickets.

This doesn't surprise me. They have already changed our FF flights from DRO to SYR every month for 3 months running. We fly mid May, hopefully they'll last that long.

Deb

umm, we fly in December BE IAD - ATL - JNB, some tickets full fare, mine upgraded with miles. Any chance they might not last that long, and what do we do if they don't?

DL has lots of cash on hand. They are definitely going survive. What they're doing is aggressive readjusting their capacity due to fuel cost and the recession.

yup, I researched on flyer talk, and that's what they said also - getting rid of some domestic routes.

Just booked a one-way ticket on Delta yesterday. SEA to West Palm Beach was only $165 with taxes. I even got the exit row on the 767-300 aircraft from SEA to Atlanta.

American Airlines will stop giving bonus miles when making a reservation on www.aa.com. Is Delta doing the same?

DL stopped giving an online booking bonus a while ago.

One of the more high-profile ones:

- JFK-ORY (with a 752) will not start as planned.

Despite it looking otherwise, you cannot hold an award ticket booked online either!

I found 2 tickets this morning and it sure looked to me like they would be held. Got a confirmation/reference # and everything.

In order to get the tickets, I needed to redeposit 2 award tickets before I could get the tickets.

I called to ask if there was anyway I could have my award tickets reissued and I told them I had already put the new flights on hold. They told me that as of 3/17, they no longer hold award ticktes! Imagine my surprise.

I cannot understand how that function still exists on the website, how I got an email with the conf/ref # and all, yet there were no flights nor a record when I called.

I did get the tickets, after my miles were redeposited, although I couldn't get out of the $75 fee.

Deb

I can't get back to the screen to edit above post. Apparently, the agent meant that SHE could not put an itinerary on hod, but you CAN do it yourself online for 48 hours.

Deb

I checked for schedule changes today and took advantage of one to make a fee free change on an award itinerary. My new flights are on AF (my last 3 CDG transits have actually been quite pleasant) so probably won't be subject to monthly schedule changes anymore

Check all of your itineraries regularly. DL is changing a lot of flights and according to the customer service rep I spoke with, they are only calling if you’re within a 30 day window. E-mail alerts aren't going out either.

The automatic re-booking when flights are changed does not always work. Here’s a prime example.

Several of us, including children, are going to Costa Rica in June. Our flights have been changed several time and of course we weren’t notified. I just happened to notice because I looked at my itinerary for another reason (couldn’t remember when I was going, actually). The problem is, the re-booking made absolutely no sense!

The BHM-ATL flight was pushed back (later) by about 30 minutes and the ATL-SJO flight was pushed up (earlier) by about 45 minutes. So, instead of over a 1 ½ hour connection, we would have 24 minutes. In ATL with children…right! It took us a while to all get together (3 families) to figure out if we wanted a refund and book CO instead of DL, and by the time we checked back on our itineraries, that 24 minutes had actually become 16 minutes due to another change. You think they would have automatically booked us on the earlier flight from BHM-ATL, but they did not. We called and asked why, and of course they blamed it on the computer. Of course, but even the computer shouldn’t automatically book a 16 minute connection anywhere, let alone ATL.

Our return flights were also pretty messed up, but not as bad as the outbound. The return was delayed slightly and the connection a few minutes earlier, with the result that we did not have a “legal” connection time for an international flight. We were automatically re-booked with a very lengthy layover. The real problem is we were booked on the last flight of the day from ATL-BHM which we know from experience (way too many times) is often oversold and also sometimes cancelled. I have driven ATL-BHM more than I care to admit. So, we called and said we wanted to keep our earlier flight reservation and were told we couldn’t, that the connection wasn’t legal. When we pointed out it would likely be changed again and we were only short by 12 minutes, the agent finally gave in. We are now double booked in both directions.

The whole thing really annoyed us because several of us are going, we have kids with us, we had great seats, and were seated with friends from Atlanta on the ATL-SJO flight. If we’d missed the ATL-SJO flight the kids would have been very disappointed, especially since the next morning quite early we are headed for Tortuguero. We were also annoyed because even though we could get a refund, the CO flight cost had gone up.

When we explained to the Delta rep that we understand flights change, and if a valid connection had been re-booked that would have made sense, her only response was “well, when you book that far in advance things are going to change several times!” This was after she didn’t understand why we wanted to keep our original reservations just in case we get the original schedule back.

BTW, this happened over a month ago, not within the last few days. We thought it was just our schedule or I would have posted sooner.

Dana- That is what has happened to us. We booked 2 tickets in August 07 for flights in May 08. One was an award ticket, the other was bought. It was really tricky to get the exact same flights, seats etc. but I did it. They have made changes that were absurd.

I also happened to &quot;just go online to look at my itinerary&quot; in Dec and found that it had changed. It changed 3 times in 3 months. It was a 3 segment flight and they had changed the departure of first flight [there had been 2 departures from our regional airport in the morning, now only 1] which caused us to arrive in Salt Lake City after the second segment took off!

This happened twice. On the second change, I was told that DH's ticket could be refunded if we wanted since the changes were not our doing. As luck would have it, I then had enough miles to get his ticket as an award ticket.

That is what we did - we got a full refund, and he got an award ticket. We even changed the routing since our arrival at final destination was much later than first ticket. All this was done with a lot of effort of the agent.

Now, they are changing the schedule again with that first morning segment running a 53 minute connection time. They say that it is 40 minutes in SLC, so it is legal. I am concerned that this is too close and it's the only flight of day to SLC.

So I want to change departure airports. Trouble is, the next closest airport is Albuquerque which is 160 miles from original airport [Durango CO]. THis is where the $75 fee per ticket in my earlier post kicks in.

After they charged me the fee and redeposit my miles [I get the new schedule from ABQ. But I pay the $150.] I think about it and call to see if they won't refund the $150 - especially becaused they did call me last weekend to say the flights had been changed and if we didn't like them, we could have 1 free change.

Long story short; I think we are going to get a refund. I get all the way to a supervisor and this is the reason we CAN'T get a refund.

We changed original airport. They allow changes if the airport is 100 miles or less. It is 160 miles from DRO to ABQ. To them, it's a whole new itinerary.

To me, I am being punished because I live in a rural area with airports being so far apart. To me, I am trying to avoid having our flights messed up by a short delay that would leave us missing our connections.

I guess paying $75 is still better than paying for a ticket, but I am still angry that they wouldn't make changes since this has to do basically with their canceling flights and shifting shedules.

OK, now's that that's been said, I am off my soapbox.
Deb