The BBC is currently running promos for an upcoming segment of their travel program which will take a look at devaluation of miles in ff programs. Over the last few years, the European legacy airlines have socked it to their customers much worse than US-based airlines have, but among US-based carriers, it is DL and US that have been leading the race to the bottom.
The crap that has come out of the European legacy airlines has been an extra incentive for me to fly LCC's whenever I can intra-Europe, while the still reasonably decent ff programs in the US have meant I have never been on any LCC flights domestically. I am sometimes even able to book European business travel on LCC's, as in a trip I have in a couple of weeks on Air Baltic.
I also find the reader poll in the Pioneer Press newspaper in NW's Minneapolis/St. Paul hub very interesting. Asked about how the flight experience had changed since DL's takeover of NW, the responses were:
Worse 59.74%
Better 3.83%
Same 36.42%