Delta vs American vs United: The Airline I Actually Recommend

Josef and I fly more now than we ever did while we were teaching, which still strikes me as funny. During the semester we were tied to a calendar written by somebody else. Now we go see the grandchildren in the spring, we take one long trip a year, and we say yes to the occasional last minute weekend because there is nothing stopping us. Over the last several years that has added up to a lot of boarding passes on the three big American carriers: Delta, American, and United.

People ask me which one I like, and I have opinions. I want to be fair about it, because all three of them will get you across the country and all three of them have had a bad day on our watch. But if you are asking me which airline I book first, without hesitating, it is Delta. I will make that case properly below, and I will be honest about what it costs you.

How I am judging these

I am not a points hobbyist and I do not fly for work. I judge an airline the way an ordinary traveling couple in their fifties and sixties judges one. Does the plane leave when it says it will. When something goes wrong, how quickly does a human being help me. Is the seat tolerable for four hours. Is the app good enough that I can solve my own problem at a gate without standing in a line of ninety people. And does the money I spend with them come back to me in any meaningful way.

Delta Air Lines

What I like

Reliability, first and above everything. Delta gets us where we are going on time more often than the other two, and the difference is not small enough to ignore. When you are connecting through a hub with an hour and ten minutes to spare, the airline that keeps its schedule is worth paying for. In the last four years we have had exactly one Delta cancellation, and they had us rebooked on a flight two hours later before we had even reached the gate agent.

The cabin crews are the other thing. There is a consistency to how Delta employees behave that I notice as a former teacher, because consistency is culture and culture is trained. They make eye contact. They answer the question you asked. When Josef's knee was bothering him on a long flight to Amsterdam, a flight attendant found him an aisle seat further back without any fuss and checked on him twice. That is not a policy. That is a person who was given room to be decent.

Their app is also, quite simply, the best of the three. It rebooks you automatically when a flight breaks, it tracks your bag with a map, and it tells you the truth about delays earlier than the departure board does. I have solved two travel disasters from my phone in an airport chair while other passengers were queuing.

What I do not like

You pay for it. Delta is usually the most expensive of the three on the routes we fly, sometimes by forty or fifty dollars a ticket, and on a round trip for two people that adds up to a nice dinner out. SkyMiles is also the least generous loyalty program of the three in terms of what a mile is actually worth, and the goalposts for status keep moving. If you are a bargain hunter first, Delta will annoy you.

Delta at a glance

• Best on-time performance of the three in our experience, by a comfortable margin.
• Most consistent cabin crews and the most useful app.
• Free messaging and, increasingly, genuinely free wifi.
• Highest fares, and a loyalty program that gives back less per dollar than it used to.

American Airlines

What I like

Reach. American goes almost everywhere, and if you live near Dallas, Charlotte, Phoenix, or Miami you will find a nonstop when the other two make you connect. Their AAdvantage miles have also been kinder to us than SkyMiles on the whole. We flew to Rome largely on miles we accumulated by not doing anything especially clever.

Fares are frequently the most reasonable of the three, and their main cabin extra seats are a decent value when you want a few more inches without buying a first class ticket.

What I do not like

Inconsistency, and I mean that as the specific criticism it is. We have had lovely American flights and we have had flights where nobody at the gate seemed to know what was happening or wanted to say so. During one delay in Charlotte we were given three different departure times in ninety minutes and no explanation for any of them. Delta has bad days too, but American's bad days feel less organized.

The older narrow body cabins are also getting tired, and the seat pitch on some of their domestic aircraft is genuinely uncomfortable for Josef, who is six foot two.

United Airlines

What I like

International routes, especially if you want to get to Europe or Asia from a hub like Newark, Chicago, or San Francisco. Their long haul product has improved a great deal, and Polaris on the overnight to Europe is the nicest lie flat seat any of the three has offered us. Their app is a solid second place behind Delta's, and their seat back entertainment is good.

United has also become the friendliest of the three about changing plans. No change fees on most fares, and a same day standby policy we have used more than once to get home early.

What I do not like

Weather at their hubs, which is not their fault, and how they handle it, which is. Newark and Chicago in the winter are a coin toss, and when things unravel there they unravel completely. We spent a night in a Chicago airport hotel that we paid for ourselves after a cancellation, which never happened to us on Delta.

Basic economy on United is also the meanest of the three. No carry on in the overhead bin, no seat selection, no changes. It is a fare designed to be upgraded out of, and it makes the advertised price a bit of a fiction.

The verdict: Delta, and it is not especially close for us

Here is the way I would put it to a friend over coffee. When you fly, you are not really buying a seat. You are buying the probability of arriving on time, and the quality of the help you receive on the day it goes wrong. On both of those measures, Delta has earned our money over and over.

I am a mathematician by training, so let me put a number to the feeling. Suppose Delta costs you fifty dollars more per round trip and you take six trips a year. That is three hundred dollars. One cancelled flight that costs you a hotel room, a missed day of your vacation, and a rebooked ticket will run you more than that on its own, and it will cost you something that does not show up in dollars at all, which is a whole evening of your life spent standing in a line feeling helpless. We have simply had fewer of those evenings with Delta.

The other reason is softer, and I make no apology for it. Josef and I are in our sixties. We are not sprinting through terminals anymore. Delta treats us like grown adults with a plan, rather than like an inventory problem to be resolved. When something happens, the app tells us before the gate does and there is a rebooking waiting. That is worth real money to me, and I would rather pay it than pretend I do not care.

So my recommendation, plainly: book Delta when it is within reasonable distance of the other fares. Book American when the price gap is large or when it is the only nonstop from your city. Book United for the long overnight to Europe, and avoid their basic economy entirely unless you enjoy surprises.

Two small things I have learned

Book the first flight of the morning whenever you can. Airplanes get later as the day goes on, and the seven in the morning departure is the one most likely to leave on time on any airline. It is an unglamorous piece of advice that has saved us more trips than any loyalty status ever did.

And put one full change of clothes and every medication in your carry on. We learned that the hard way in Charlotte, and now I do it without thinking. No airline is good enough to make that unnecessary.