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Delta Air Lines Offers On-Time Guarantee To Corporate Business Travelers

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Delta Air Lines has been making some serious moves in the last years to woo business travelers, redesigning its business class cabins and retooling its loyalty program to cater to high-spend customers along the way. Their latest move, profiled yesterday by Bloomberg, now targets business travelers on corporate contracts.

Corporate business travel still makes up a decent volume of business for the legacy airlines. By putting an entire company on a corporate contract, airlines can guarantee a fixed volume of business and in turn, offer a modest discount to the organization. Companies also like the executive perks -- in addition to bulk travel discounts, airlines typically give away free elite status and other goodies to select executives and decision makers, greasing the wheels for future business.

With its new plan, Delta plans to offer its corporate clients an on-time guarantee. The airline, which recently improved its on-time performance metrics, now prides itself on leading both American and United Airlines in getting flights in on schedule. To back up their claim, if they fall behind the pack they're offering refunds to the corporate account ranging between $1,000 and $250,000, depending on the severity of the disruptions.

The devil, of course, is in the details. Delta only plans to offer refunds if the airline falls behind both American and United over the course of the entire year and it doesn't take international and regional flights into account. As a result, Bloomberg speculates that it's fairly unlikely that Delta will have to pay out.

Despite the shadows of a well-disguised marketing campaign, there's still plenty of value in the guarantee. Airlines competing over scheduling performance is only going to drive up the number of on-time flights and facilitate more connections, a result that few traveling passengers would ever complain about. So even if the airline doesn't refund a dime, all ships should rise in the tide. And if few corporate travel accounts actually do get a small refund -- well, that's just icing.