And You Thought You Were Mad With Delta Air Lines: Traveler Wears Complaint T-Shirt While Flying With The Airline

If you thought you were mad with Delta Air Lines over its operational performance and especially recently announced changes to its SkyMiles program, you likely have nothing on one guy who created his own complaint t-shirt detailing every gripe he has with the Atlanta-based airline.

The t-shirt details ‘reasons why not to fly Delta Air Lines’, but the funny thing is that the man is wearing the shirt onboard a Delta plane, which poses the obvious question: Why isn’t this guy following his own advice?

Rather than taking aim with the wildly unpopular changes that Delta has proposed for its SkyMiles frequent flyer program, however, this unhappy traveler lists a series of issues he has faced on recent flights.

For example:

• Fl#1175 NO ice for refreshments
• Fl#1270 only 2/3 of the plane received refreshments
• Fl#313 was cancelled due to ‘mechanical issues’
• Fl#1236 Only refreshment was a hall glass of warm water, NO ice. Arrived early at airport but plane leaving our gat(e) had mechanical problems. Now we arrived late & missed connecting flights.

The t-shirt lists several more complaints before declaring: “Customer friendly NO NO NO, Greedy YES YES YES”.

“THINK before you fly DELTA”.

It’s not clear when this photo was taken, but it’s hard to imagine the passenger would be pleased with Delta’s recently proposed SkyMiles spending and lounge access requirements.

Since Delta announced the massive new spending rules, the airline has been inundated with complaints and threats from high-spending frequent flyers to jump ship to another airline.

It seems, however, that Delta has finally taken heed, and CEO Ed Bastian recently admitted that the airline had probably gone “too far” and that “modifications” would be required…. although Bastian and his team are still assessing what changes need to be made.

The problem, as Bastian sees it, is that Delta only has finite resources and can’t service the huge numbers of top-tier frequent flyers and other passengers who have gained lounge access through credit cards.

In order to maintain these services, Bastian believes that the elite frequent flyer ranks have to be cut back, although it’s clear that Delta ended up scoring a pretty serious own goal – not only with the proposed changes but also with how it communicated the changes.