noplasticshowers

Are all airlines the same? When it comes to short hops on the east coast, I recently found out through some experimentation that the answer is no.

I am a longtime United flyer based at IAD. So I am pretty much stuck in a bad marriage. Watching United’s quality of service plummet and never recover has been a major disappointment. Jeff Smisek is one of the worst CEOs in history from an operations perspective.

Is Delta any better? Well lets compare notes.

Terminal B looks like this.

IAD Terminal B != Walmart Terminal A

Terminal D looks like this. (FWIW, Terminal A is even worse.)

Terminal D has a gorgeous drop ceiling.

A United regional jet looks like this (vine).

A Delta regional jet looks like this (vine).

Delta has wifi. United has stories about how hard it is to install wifi in airplanes.

Delta operations at IAD are smooth and professional. United put us all on a plane, then deplaned us all due to an Easyjet computer operations error. Just amazingly bad. Easyjet is the worst United subcontractor of all, and there are a bunch of bad ones.

All told, Delta won this experiment hands down. Too bad IAD is a United hub. I’m stuck.

But in the end it is all just peanut butter.