Delta Air Lines — going the extra anti-consumer mile

Whenever a passenger pays Delta Air Lines to fly, they are putting money in the corporate pockets of an airline that seeks to deceive, confuse and mislead its customers. Let me count its evil ways.
Refuses to disclose extra fees. Consumers don’t know the full price of travel.
Delta is not alone in this category. They are accompanied by virtually every airline except Southwest in this deception. Honestly, this would not be an issue if the Department of Transportation (DOT) would simply declare that all costs for an airline ticket must be disclosed. DOT has the power just like the FDA has the power to require that all foods, from cereal to candy bars, sport nutrition labels.
This should not be rocket science; however, airlines which have inordinate influence at DOT have managed to trump the public’s right to know with their own right to sell their products as they wish. Fortunately for consumers, when those sales and marketing techniques involve deceptive and misleading practices, DOT can step in and require disclosure.
In the meantime, Delta is one of the leaders insisting that basic costs can be hidden. Delta claims that costs such as baggage charges, seat reservations and other extra fees need not be disclosed to passengers or shared with travel agents, which are their ticket agents. This is an amazing stance, justifying price deception, that should be forbidden by DOT.
Restricting distribution of airfares. Consumers cannot easily comparison shop for airfares.
Delta Air Lines is alone in this practice. They are forbidding some websites from publishing public airfares, even when they are legally obtained. This means that websites like Hipmunk, TripAdvisor, SkyScanner, Travelzoo, Cheapair and others cannot display Delta airfares.
Go to Hipmunk.com. Delta flights can be seen, but the prices are not revealed. This makes comparison shopping impossible for consumers. Delta’s decisions about which websites it will allow to display airfares is seemingly random. However, any restriction of airfares makes comparison shopping very difficult, limits competition, and is not transparent for its customers.
Currently, airlines are not paying taxes because of loss carry-forwards. Airlines are not paying airline fees that support the travel infrastructure, such as passenger facilities charges, 9/11 TSA security fees, segment fees, agricultural inspection fees and immigration fees. Consumers are paying all of these fees. Airlines do not pay the 7.5 percent transportation excise tax that supports the air traffic control system, that is a tax that is also paid only by consumers. (Clarification added: Consumers are paying these taxes fees, not the airlines. When airlines complain that they are heavily taxed, the complaint is bogus — their passengers are being heavily taxed.)
Basically, consumers are paying for the infrastructure, from inspectors to airports to air traffic control, that allow airlines to fly. No airline should be allowed to restrict the distribution of its airfares or its ancillary fees. These should be public information.
Misleading consumers by not disclosing code-share flights
It is not enough for the airlines, especially Delta Air Lines, that they can legally mislead consumers by claiming a far greater aviation network than they actually fly. They do this by putting their codes on other airline’s routes. For some reason, DOT allowed airlines to do this legally; however, DOT also mandated that when making reservations for consumers, the airlines, including Delta Air Lines, must notify consumers when the flight upon which the reservation was being made was not operated by Delta Air Lines. This is the trade-off for being allowed to advertise an untruth.
Over the past year, DOT has regularly been testing airline compliance with this rule. The DOT “secret shopper” investigation called telephone reservation agents and found that Delta Air Lines did not reveal that flights were operated by codeshare partners in eight out of 50 tests. Naturally, the consumer protection division of DOT fined Delta Air Lines for misleading and deceiving consumers as they shopped for airfares.
The astounding response from Delta: We shouldn’t be fined because we followed the rules 42 out of 50 times and Delta Air Lines claimed that they only have to notify a passenger about the airline actually operating the flight “prior to purchase.” Delta’s logic is that since DOT never purchased a ticket, it was impossible for them to have broken any rules.
This amazing defense turns years of consumer protection jurisprudence on its head and Delta Air Lines’ contempt for its passengers will only end up costing American taxpayers more in legal costs.
This kind of activity borders on premeditated evil, not merely misleading and deceptive. The court case is ongoing.
Squatting on gates at Love Field to limit DOJ antitrust remedies
When the Department of Justice (DOJ) finally agreed to allow American Airlines and US Airways to merge last year, part of the remedies was the divestiture of gates across the country to encourage more competition from low cost carriers like Southwest, JetBlue, Virgin America and others. DOJ even went so far as to specifically define Delta Air Lines as not an appropriate airline to take over these gates. DOJ also handled Dallas with its two airports as one market.
Since then, Delta has been renting a gate from United Airlines at Dallas Love Field. United sold those gates to Southwest Airlines. The lease on the gates expires at the end of July. Southwest has notified Delta that they can continue with their lease until that time. Then they will be adding flights and will require that gate.
Delta Air Lines is refusing to move. This violation of the gate lease will hurt consumers.
This will result in more legal fees for American taxpayers and will thwart the remedies specified by DOJ in their approval of the AA/US mega-merger. Delta’s actions limit competition between the Dallas market and other Delta markets. By not living up to its signed contract, Delta limits capacity because Delta is flying smaller commuter aircraft from these gates. If Delta prevails, this action will slice the number of Dallas Love Field passengers by almost half-a-million when compared to passengers that would fly if Southwest flies its proposed schedule.
Delta Air Lines has been leading the Big 3 putsch against Open Skies treaties and competition
With Delta’s focus on eliminating competition and price comparison, they are the leading airline in a battle against open travel between countries. Fortunately, while Delta has been joined by American Airlines and United Airlines together with their cohorts in some aviation labor unions, the rest of the aviation economy is lining up in support of the Open Skies Treaties and more international competition.
Boeing, FedEx, UPS, airports, consumer groups, corporate travel managers, chambers of commerce, and almost every other US airline are lining up behind the free market mantra of competition. The Big 3 airlines are attempting to do the opposite — eliminate competition, limit choice and maintain their oligopolistic hold on the international aviation market.
Hopefully, the powers that be at the Departments of State and Transportation, together with the executive branch, will keep the Delta-led international oligopolistic airline alliances in check and guarantee competition and more choice for consumers.
Right now, in a world of airline rogues, Delta Air Lines stands out as the most committed to misleading and deceiving consumers, adding confusion to the airfare buying process, limiting competition and eliminating efficient comparison shopping. From a consumer’s point of view, these actions are unabashedly evil.