Here’s something funny: When Delta Air Lines announced this month that it would end a special discount for members of the National Rifle Association, a significant number of NRA members reacted on social media with something to the effect of, “Wait, we had a discount?”
There’s a reason why these people were confused. The discount was brand new, and it was for a group rate for a specific occasion. Only 13 people ever redeemed it.
The “discounted fares had been available for a short time and were only for NRA members purchasing flights to the group’s 2018 convention in Dallas,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday, citing a Delta spokesman.
And here I was thinking that Delta’s major announcement following the Feb. 14 Parkland, Fla., massacre, which claimed the lives of 17 people, had some teeth to it. I guess that’s my fault.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian assured airline employees Friday that the decision to end a discount that had previously benefited a whopping 13 people was done so as to “remain neutral” in the debate over gun control. “We are supporters of the 2nd Amendment, just as we embrace the entire Constitution of the United States,” he said in a company-wide memo. He continued, adding that the organization is considering pulling the plug on discounts for any group that could be considered political or divisive.
“We are in the process of a review to end group discounts for any group of a politically divisive nature,” Bastain wrote. “I know it is not comfortable to be caught in a highly emotional debate, and many of you have received questions from customers. We are at our best when we bring our customers and our world closer together.”
He has to be kicking himself over how this went down. Perhaps he wishes now that his company was much clearer in its original statement. When Delta first announced it would be ending an NRA-specific discount, it said: “Delta’s decision reflects the airline’s neutral status in the current national debate over gun control amid recent school shootings.”
“Out of respect for our customers and employees on both sides, Delta has taken action to refrain from entering this debate and focus on its business. Delta continues to support the 2nd Amendment,” the statement added.
Delta also tweeted it would “be requesting that the NRA remove our information from their website.”
Note how there’s nothing about how little effect the discount actually had on the NRA or its members.
Pro-Second Amendment advocates responded angrily to the initial announcement. Republican lawmakers in Georgia even approved a bill ending the airline’s tax exemption for jet fuel, which was worth roughly $40 million.
Maybe that could’ve been avoided had Delta explained the full context of its little-known group-rate discount. Instead, the airline is facing down a $40 million fiasco in Georgia. Put another way, Delta is paying roughly $3 million for those 13 discounted travelers. Bad deal.
