Delta Is (Not So Secretly) Spying On Qatar Airways In Atlanta

I worked for Delta for 5 miserable years...harassed, dehumanized and tactically forced from “the greatest employees on earth.” Amen. Don’t get me wrong, if being institutionalized for 20 years before you can take advantage of the “perks” is your bag, it might just be the place for you. I’m years removed and still dealing with the ramifications of their influential social network. Not literally of course, but I do hope these Gulf Coast airlines burn these lying greedy bastards to the ground. Greatest miserable employees on earth...

Ok, let's the simple stuff out of he way. The demand is faked for the first flight with the chief. Its true for any new QR market we launched. If he wanted it to look full (in this case he did), then we'd get an interoffice email inviting us or he'd pay F/A on reserve and stuff it with them (they were happy as heck to get out of jail for a few days, so it's easy to fill 1st and any other plane that way). It doesn't happen a lot. What the mostly do is operate the schedule no matter what. So while i was the worst example was an A340 that went ex-DOH with 11 pax and ex-IAH with 21. Stuff like not applying for up-gauge approvals it happens all the time. It is still an airline run by people from the Indian Subcontinent so all frustrations that you experience when doing business with an Indian company, then you will experience. Which, if you're are like most Americans will drive you insane. And when i first read, and then never had to again read because I realized it didn't matter, the QR Flight Profitability Books i couldn't believe my eyes as every single flight leg (except EWR/GVA, since discontinued) was losing money even when you just included the most variable cost only. Oh yeah, that guy that forgot to file the equip up-gauge will be fired and deported. He, or she, was probably a grade 4 or 5 from India so maybe making $20,000 to $25,000. There is this little red phone,in DOH (it was on the second floor HQ Old Airport Building) not sure where it is in the new HQ Bldg but it only gets calls from and goes to the chief's phone (if it rings more that 3 times, he finds out who was staffing it and has them terminated and deported. He doesn't worry about money at all. After all they are in an "introduction and induce trial phase" and money is not a constraint. He always laughs if someone takes a job at grade 7 and will never respect that person because, "even my tea boy is a grade seven!". He an angry, but funny elf. Total napoleana complex. So wrt to the counting thing at DL, Yeah did it all time. So when I was trying to run another new carrier out of business (Reno, Midway, TWA, Braniff, Vanguard, Kiwi, HP(mini-hub concept)--I think that's all i killed personally),all I had to do was push an override button and now all the seats that we offered in he "market of death" would be at the lowest price level. So I could go from 20 seats in a market offered at $59 to 2500 $59 seats offered in as little as 9 hours--no new planes no changes, etc. etc. It was easily validated as our way to "mop up additional and newly stimulated demand". It did do this but the real reason of course so that we could simply price match and the flood the market with supply to destroy the new market entrant's business plan by crushing any actual yield or mix the would get (i.e. I would flood so many seats to the market that the price would never move off the bottom lowest faire). Then I would use counts to see how actual traffic was coming by flight by day, etc. and begin to adjust. So very useful and helpful in putting new market entrants out of business. The rule of thumb of course: cash is kiing. Both airlines will lose money, but to the new entrant this market is critical to them and access to capital to fund losses in not as big. But in the case of QR has more money than DL, so they cannot be doing this for any strategic or tactical internal benefit. I mean if your are in eh weaker cash position, then it;s best to extricate yourself than it is too fight. So DL most likely is using this data to fund that Partnership for Open And Free Skies or whatever. I don't like the usa carrier's position here an wish that the would stop. $160B we give to our guys, the ME3 are growing to gram market share so, just like we did then when the CAB artificially set fares and passed on excess (above market rents consumer surplus to airline and the grants (eas, others) the usa transfers tons of money to our airline industry. BTW, the product, service and price? The Me3 can be any Norh American carrier on all three. I always choose them(ME3) when I am not contractually obligated (via the please be quiet NAmrican Legacy Carrier's "Fly America Act"--that artifically steers my business to an inferior air carrier) to fly US carriers only.

@Rob..I take exception to you referring negatively about 30-40 year attendants(not saying some are the best, but you really cant put them all in a certain group) I have been an attendant for 29 years, still love my job. Yes some are jaded, but my guess is that you would want them in an evacuation, versus a 21 yr old with 6 months experience. BTW how long have you worked at your job?

Here is a link to an article from the Air Line Pilots Association about why Delta is counting passengers. There has been a fight for years about State supported Middle Eastern countries competing against US carriers. http://www.alpa.org/en/advocacy/open-skies

possibly, given the newsworthy theatrics of the Qatar Station Manager and his general lack of credibility, clicking is the only way to get first-hand, reliable data on the daily load ATL-DOH. Another point of knowledge to be gained is how many crew members Qatar sends to staff the 777. I would guess that, given the eagerness to please, Qatar will staff at 12 certified flight attendants and 2 cleaners who do nothing but clean bathrooms. Delta will probably staff the 777-200LR at 8 flight attendants, 3 pilots total.