Even Delta’s own CEO has no idea what Delta calls their re-branded OFCMB seats

There are few times I truly LOL at my computer screen but it happened today as I was watching Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines, speaking just yesterday at the Detroit Economic Club (HT to reader Mark). After his speech, full of bashing of the ME3 airlines, he was willing to take questions from the audience. He answered some of them and others he danced around and said other things not answering the question.

But the most classic one that made be bust up was this one:

Question: “How will cabins be configured in the future to be less uncomfortable”?

His answer was just great. First off he says that he flies coach on Delta (was in row 19 on a 757 up to DTW). This answer that he often gives should come with an asterisk because:

1) He only flies coach domestically but flies DeltaONE internationally.
2) His VPs fly in Delta business class a.k.a. Delta 1st class

Then he went on to say a bunch of stuff that just floored me. Let’s see what you think:

“We have 1st class obviously”

No, obviously you don’t. We all know what kind of seats Delta has. Delta ONLY has 2 class service. Delta has business class and coach. That’s it. None of them are 1st class seats. Obviously.

“We have economy comfort which is a whole new class with a lot more space”.

No, if you check with marketing, you have what I call OFCMB or:

• DeltaONE (a.k.a. business elite)
• First Class (a.k.a. domestic business class)
• Comfort+ (a.k.a. what WAS economy comfort)
• Main Cabin (a.k.a. coach)
• Basic Economy (a.k.a. whatever coach seat Delta gives you)

At least that is what all the marketing info says that I blogged about back in December of 2014. Maybe something has changed. Let’s see what was said next:

“Then we have basic economy” then corrected himself and said “we have economy then basic economy.”

Ah well. So he agrees Main Cabin is just economy. On that we can all agree, but not what Delta is calling that “section” of the aircraft.

He then goes on to talk about the about 4 different price points on the airplane. I guess this really is correct (I always say five) as when there is DeltaONE seats onboard there is no 1st class section or cabin. This is really good as if Delta did put in 1st class on a jet with DeltaONE can you even imagine the confusion this would bring for flyers? They would all want to be in 1st class and reps would have to explain that 1st class is not as good as a DeltaONE seat? (Cue who’s on first, what’s on second, I don’t know is on third)!

The bottom line was he never really answered the question about making coach more comfortable. Even “Comfort+” is just a basic coach seat with a little more space and recline and nothing to get excited about. Sure it comes with more perks and I do like that, but as far as a bigger seat like many other airlines, including Delta partners like Air France or Virgin Atlantic have, that is clearly not something Delta is going to embrace.- René

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