MSPeconomist

People also bring up SkyTeam because many SkyTeam partner flights can be booked by DL on the same DL ticket as DL flights, especially if there's a codeshare. This generally cannot be done for a random airline; one must purchase the ticket from some sort of travel agent and probably pay a service fee to do so. Also, SkyTeam flight naturally arise when people have a trip that's part award ticket and part ticket paid with money. These cannot be on the same PNR, yet it can make sense, for example, to purchase MSP-IAD-MSP and take an award ticket IAD-CDG-IAD on AF (if available) using DL miles. These would seem to be the most common situations where the new policy will cause trouble.