It’s really no different than Delta’s defense of: “Well, all the other big American airlines are part of these alliances too and they’re doing business with bad countries too.” That might be true, but just as a teacher doesn’t care to hear “Well, Johnny was doing it too,” neither do I.

It’s my prerogative if I chose to write something about the Delta-Saudi alliance, but didn’t write anything about the other airlines. There’s no conflict of interest here. I happen to fly Delta a lot and someone sent me an article about this partnership.

I’m glad that Delta will not be code sharing with Saudi Arabian and I think that’s a good solution. Will I continue to fly Delta? I will. Did I ever call for a boycott of Delta? I certainly didn’t. I also never encouraged people to call Delta or protest or anything. And when I realized that the original title of my blog post was misleading and sensationalized, I wrote an updated blog post explaining and correcting myself.

Again, I appreciate the dialogue. You clearly know more about the airline industry than I do. I hope that in the future big companies like Delta (and other airlines) will use their power to help sway the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia toward a more democratic and less discriminatory outlook.