Flying the Delta misconnection

By By Bob Martin, The Alabama Scene
Every Southerner who flies is probably familiar with the line: “No matter if you’re going to heaven or hell you’ve got to pass through the Atlanta airport.” The Memphis connection westward has altered that suggestion somewhat, but not much.
And if you’re headed to Atlanta or Memphis by air, you’ve got to first fly the Delta Connections, Pinnacle Airlines to Memphis or Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA) to Atlanta.
Most Alabamians flying to Atlanta usually start in airports located in Birmingham, Huntsville, Chattanooga, Panama City, Pensacola, Dothan, Mobile, Columbus or Montgomery, and unless we’re flying in a private aircraft we must use Atlantic Southeast, which for years has billed itself as “The Delta Connection.”
The airline should adopt a more appropriate slogan, perhaps “The Delta Misconnection.” In 1997 Forbes called it “America’s worst airline with an on-time arrival percentage of 63.4 percent. Things haven’t changed much. Since this past Jan. 1 the airline’s on time arrival percentage at the Atlanta airport is a dismal 68.9 percent and its overall on-time arrival percentage is 70.1 percent. Of the 20 major airlines that report numbers to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), only Comair, another Delta Connection carrier with hubs in Cincinnati, New York-JFK, Salt Lake City, Orlando, and Boston, has a worse record.
Since January ASA has rung up over one million minutes of being late, minutes which don’t start ticking until 15 minutes past a plane’s scheduled arrival or departure time. Three of the last four times I have flown out of Montgomery, I suffered through a misconnection caused by ASA. I have now made it a practice, if flying out of Montgomery, to schedule a layover in Atlanta of no less than an hour-and-a-half to compensate for a possible late arrival by ASA either to Montgomery or back to Atlanta. But even that doesn’t work if the plane is a “no show” and that happens all too frequently with ASA. Since January three percent of its nearly 150,000 flights have been cancelled or diverted.
Driving to Atlanta
Many folks in the capital city have begun driving to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. It’s only two hours to the terminal up Interstate 85 and there is airport parking with a shuttle service on the Montgomery side of the airport. Montgomery also has shuttle services to the Atlanta airport.
According to BTS the Atlantic Southeast on time arrival percentages at the feeder airports most of us use show the following: Birmingham – 77.5 percent, (the best) Huntsville – 75.2 percent, Chattanooga – 75 percent, Dothan – 74.6 percent, Montgomery – 74 percent, Panama City – 72.4 percent, Columbus – 70.4 percent, Mobile – 68.9 percent, Pensacola – 68.3 percent.
On the other hand, Pinnacle, the Memphis-based carrier Delta inherited in the merger with Northwest, ranks third best among the nation’s airlines with an overall on time percentage of 83.9 percent and an 84.7 percent on time performance at Memphis International since this past January 1. Of the airports listed above, Pinnacle’s best on time percentage is 91.6 percent in Montgomery and its lowest is 83.9 percent in Birmingham, quite a difference than that of the airline many Alabamians depend on to connect in Atlanta.
And if you’re looking for better airline service, you’d better look again. The BTS reports that U.S. scheduled passenger airlines employed 6.3 percent fewer workers in June 2009 than in June 2008, the 12th consecutive decrease in full-time equivalent employee (FTE) levels for the scheduled passenger carriers from the same month of the previous year.
The Bureau also reports that for the first five months of 2009, the number of scheduled domestic and international passengers on U.S. airlines declined by 9.5 percent from the same period in 2008, dropping to 281.9 million.
A couple of years back former Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright and Gov. Bob Riley held meetings with Atlantic Southeast officials, more-or-less demanding that the airline provide better service to Alabama. Perhaps the only action that will get their attention is when more people start driving to Atlanta for departures.
The two mother ships for these feeder airlines, the now combined company of Delta and Northwest have respective overall on time percentages of 80.3 percent for Northwest and 77.3 percent for Delta. Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport remains by far the nation’s busiest. For the year-to-date there were 16,062,000 enplanements, far outdistancing No. 2 and No. 3, Chicago O’Hare and Dallas-Ft. Worth.
Bob Martin is editor and publisher of The Montgomery Independent. Email him at: bob@montgomeryindependent.com