The Delta-Virgin marriage: made in heaven – or tears before bedtime?
Delta recently bought the 49% of Virgin the Great Smiling Silver Beard doesn’t own.
Delta is quite liked by investment analysts as they have been busy cutting costs better than many of their competitors.
I am not sure that is enough to make them a better business, let alone good partners for Virgin, for reasons I will now explain.
As I work for myself, I am as cheap as chips.
I never catch a bus if I can walk; I never catch a taxi if I can catch a bus; and I always get the best airline deal.
To get to New York last time I took Delta. The food is rubbish, the wine appalling, the service unpredictable, depending on which crew you get – but never really good. But they get you there, and they are often more than half empty, so you can lie down.
There was an unexpected bonus on this flight– a good laugh in their inflight magazine. It was the editorial called “The View From Here”.
As I read I realised that title sums up the Delta philosophy. They look at things from their point of view, not their customers’.
The piece explained how their “philosophy” makes them wonderful.
This conclusion – quite at variance with the facts as experienced by this passenger – has been reached by forming a committee of employees.
There is a picture of the boss Richard Anderson, sitting down pointing at something in a document with a group of smiling sycophants around him. The caption only gives his name and none of theirs.
Perceptive readers will have noted that no customers were in that picture. Nor were they anywhere else in the magazine. Nor were any consulted, as far as I can see, in reaching the self-congratulatory results of the survey. Perceptive readers will also be aware that it is the customers that pay all the airline’s wages
That really says it all, doesn’t it? They look in a mirror and like what they see.
Mr. Anderson should get his incredibly overpaid derriere down to JFK and fly to London on Delta, cattle class anonymously – first making sure he travels from Manhattan on the subway to Howard Beach or Jamaica.
Then he should repeat the exercise, but travel on any of the better airlines – Virgin, perhaps. He will learn a lot about how to do things. Less philosophy, more smiles.
Virgin used to be in partnership with Singapore Airlines, who have the best service in the world. They even used to have mixed crews on flights to South East Asia. And I think they caught some good habits from their partners.
What will they catch from Delta? A nasty infection, I fear.
Totally, totally agree!
Have to say, whenever I have flown Delta in the USA I have found them to be OK. However, the point is well made that they have a very different culture to Virgin and clearly from your observations, at “the top” they are in no way customer focused.
I agree with your comment that this alliance will most likely end in tears. What I find astonishing is that the warning signs are pretty clear and aren’t exactly a great “secret”. When I completed my MBA over 25 years ago, these sort of culture-clash issues where widely discussed (unfortunately, most of the marketing I was taught was of limited use!). I guess it just goes to show that most people in business either don’t know or simply ignore the lessons of the past.
As for Virgin, having just completed a return trip Sydney-London in the last 2 weeks, I was a little disappointed. I hadn’t flown Virgin before so a good price on the ticket and a good reputation was enough to convince me to try them in preference to my usual choice – Qantas. It’s not that Virgin were bad, they just didn’t live up to expectations and on balance I’d rank Qantas economy slightly better. The Virgin staff are certainly very helpful and friendly, so no great complaints.
One benefit of the long trip was that I finally got around to reading “How To Write Sales Letters That Sell” by some chap called Drayton Bird. He seems to know a thing or two about writing sales copy and it was a most worthwhile investment of my time!
Flying by commercial aitrlines is absolutely horrible–and that is not including going through security (which can be a nightmare).
The bigest problem I have is making connections–just where do you really go to catch that particular connecting flight that will take you to where you need to go?
The whole idea of traveling by airplane is great–I really like flying. But I hate commercial flying. I have been thinking about buying an old Soviet MiG and having it restored. Then I won’t have to worry about commercial flying!