Delta Is Winning the U.S. Premium Traveler, But Needs to Up Its Game on the Global Stage
Photo Credit: The Delta One lounge opened at New York's JFK June 25. Delta / Delta Air Lines
Skift Take
Delta is now the best in America. But to realize its ambitions, it needs to start benchmarking itself against the actual world’s best. That is much harder.
On Experience
Colin Nagy is a marketing strategist and writes on customer-centric experiences and innovation across the luxury sector, hotels, aviation, and beyond. You can read all of his writing here.Delta's glow up is real. As someone who writes (and obsesses) about customer experience and luxury, I've got to hand it to them. The brand feels crisp: New premium lounges actually deliver, the app works (and works well), and most of their staff seem genuinely proud of what they do. Walk through their new Delta One lounges in LAX or JFK and you can feel it: They've cracked the code on attracting that finicky U.S. creative class crowd.
This isn't just my perception: Three-quarters of their first-class seats are now paid for, not upgrades. Premium tickets are growing faster than economy and are poised to actually overtake regular cabin revenue by 2027. The old-school road warriors? They're increasingly on the outside of the red velvet rope looking in, as Delta goes all-in on the folks dropping $30K+ a year for Diamond status on a revenue-based model.
Assuming you don’t get stuck on a clunky 767 crossing the U.S., a lot of t
