I have German cousins in town this week and around the dinner table last night, they showered Delta Air Lines with praise.
They flew economy class from Stuttgart to Atlanta and exclaimed, “Never have we had so much food on a flight! Two full meals plus snacks all the time. The FAs were always coming down the aisles with food. Good food. Everyone was nice and the seats were comfortable.”
That’s a good review. Well-done Delta.
The differences amongst carriers in economy class are often far less than in business or first class, but I argue the economy class experience is getting better on the whole. True, seats are narrower than before as is seat pitch. But wi-fi, power, hundreds of on-demand movies, and healthier meal options balance that out, at least in my book. Most importantly, airfare is just plain cheap, compared to what it was 10, 20, or 30 years ago.
The glowing review underscores another point I want to address. It appears that European and Latin America demand to the USA has not waned in the early months of the Trump Administration.
Brian Sumers reports foreign (non-US) airlines CEOs healthy demand:
We have not seen a Trump effect — not at all. Latins are flying, as always. … None of that has been affected by the change of government in the U.S., and we don’t see a reason why it should be affected –COPA CEO Pedro Heilbron
We haven’t seen any change in the booking patterns. There has been some media coverage indicating that the interest to go to the U.S. should have dropped, but we haven’t seen that in our figures. –SAS CEO Rickard Gustafson
People have their relatives [and] families can live all over the world, or anyplace in the world. And people just want to come and see each other. Politics doesn’t stop that. – Finnair CEO Pekka Vauramo
CONCLUSION
I’m happy (and a bit relieved) that travel to the USA remains resilient. For visitors mulling a trip to the USA, I can only say, please give us a try. We look forward to welcoming you.
Image: Julian Herzog / Wikimedia Commons
I appreciate that you’re not just finding all the negative things about Trump and reporting them. I’ve seen a number of bloggers that are simply reporting all the negatives they can find about the Trump administration but not speaking about the things he’s doing right. Personally, I think that makes things appear much worse than they really are. Although many people don’t agree with certain things Trump may be doing, I don’t think it’s right to just make everything he does sound bad, when really things aren’t as bad as people make them seem. I believe this article shows good stats and is good clarification that international travel demand has not decreased with the Trump administration.
Joe C. you’re a bad person.
@Joe C: lol. This article didn’t praise trump at all or even talk about him. Simply stating that Delta economy is good by experience of Matthew’s cousin. Tough it also states that trump administration didn’t cause any change the traffic, it is hardly a praise. Unless, trump is bad (in your mind), he fact that things went normal is definetely a good thing.
Trump will be irrelevant to tourism plans (unless perhaps you are Muslim). How many people choose their holiday destination on how much or little they approve of a country’s elected leader? I would wager that many people going abroad will not even know who the leader of the destination country is, let alone what his or her politics are.
I don’t know if he is irrelevant to travel plans, at least to me it seems pretty unreasonable to ask for all my email addresses and social media handles from the past 5 to 15 years ( not that I can positively remember them without a doubt ) or that you can be required to open up my phone or computer at immigration.
So that is shaping my travel plans and I rather visit Canada than the US.
By the way, I am Dutch.
Delta also remains one of the very few carriers with 9 across seating on all of their 777’s. That means 18″ wide seats in coach instead of horrific 17.2″ widths by other airlines, including Emirates. Delta does not get enough credit for their far superior service and hard product.