ijgordon

That's just so disingenuous. Five(ish) years ago the opposite was true. DL was *years* from getting rid of all the horrible recliner seats while AA had pretty quickly gone to nearly flat angled beds on its entire fleet. The fact is that if you tied your loyalty to whichever airline had the best seats at the time you'd be switching airlines every few years.

Not sure how many miles you need for a DL transcon upgrade, but assuming it's 30k r/t, you're saying you value the 30k miles at under $500. Wow, perhaps SkyPesos is a well-deserved name. I guess not being able to redeem for any 3-class F international awards really limits the value...

MSPeconomist

There's a difference between constantly switching FF programs to get the latest generation seats versus taking current seats into consideration when starting or after you've decided to switch anyway and the question is which program at that point.

Using 30,000 miles to save $500 isn't a great redemption, but it's almost twice the value of pay with miles which would be the fallback way to use miles without any effort for those who qualify.

FlyDeltaJets87

Never said it was very practical. Just said it was possible, and probably not as hard as you think to program.

In terms of marketing and value, yes. In terms of the programming required for the software. No.

Again - I never said such a move would be smart, or play out well for DL. Most people probably do check alternate sources (3rd party sites) and may also browse fares without logging in. I don't always login when I'm starting to look at tickets. My point was that such a move would be, from a technical/programming/IT standpoint, very much possible, which is contrary to your point of:
The mechanism is very much there. It's just not employed.

MSPeconomist

Just speculation, but I could envision DL charging personalized prices for award tickets before doing it for regular paid tickets. It's not a big step from the enhanced coach award availability for different elite tiers and award ticket prices in miles that are more closely associated with the cost to purchase the ticket.

baccarat_king

This has been a major component of hotel pricing for CZR-Group for years. While many do it, they have made it an art form. Room prices determined by "customer value" in the awards (loyalty) program.

Many complaints about SkyMiles would go away, if they used customer value ranking to determine award availability and mileage redemption levels. Of course, once you go deep into this type of system things become very opaque with regard to understanding (cracking/investigating) award redemptions.

pbarnette

So? I have been choosing on seat and schedule (with some consideration for price) for years. Loyalty need not be the primary driver of purchasing decisions and stating such is hardly disingenuous.

DL2SXM

You must be living in the past. I don't care what happened 5 years ago. Today, Delta blows the doors of the American competition when it comes to not only the onboard product, but on time performance, system/flight recovery and hospitality. Plus, what other American airline has IFE in coach in the 767 and 747s? Heck, once AA completes mods on the 767s, they still won't have IFE installed in J. You will get handed a tablet 45 minutes into your flight which will then be collected as the plane starts descending. Delta lets you enjoy your IFE options immediately upon pushback, up to and including landing. Its the little things that Delta does, they all add up.

Zeeb

This, this, this. Doubly so because every corporate travel policy allows a little bit of wiggle room to take a flight that isn't the absolute cheapest in order to fly a preferred airline, but doesn't allow complete freedom to buy a more expensive ticket. If the Delta flight is $80 more than the AA flight people can buy the Delta ticket, but not if it is $200 more. And having status on Delta makes that worthwhile for someone even if the routing is slightly longer or less convenient. That's the point of a FF program. To get people to prefer your airline even when, for an individual flight, there might be slightly better options.

5khours

1. Not to be argumentative, but I would hardly describe it as "blows the doors of the American competition" when DL is the only major without an international F product.

2. On top of that, I suspect you will find a large percentage of people prefer the UA J product: less privacy but more space. (as a poll showing PMUA/PMCO J preferences show....those who like the privacy are vociferous but necessarily in a majority.)

3. On time performance when normalized for ATC and weather is 2 to 3 percentage points..... maybe a 45 minute time saving for a EXP, DM or 1K. International is an entirely different kettle of fish with much higher on time percentages for all airlines.

4. Hospitality is better? That's a grey donkey versus brown donkey argument. All American carriers are extremely mediocre.

That said, DL has been improving while UA, for example, has been going downhill.... however..... DL still has a long way to go. For international premium traffic, they are still (IMHO) a terrible choice unless you live in DTW/MSP/ATL.

sethb

Except that we don't get the upgrades on recliners JFK-SFO. (Yeah, some month they'll stop having recliners on that route, maybe.)

sethb

He claimed most people will lose under the new system.

He showed that the average price paid per mile is around $0.16, and breakeven for the new system is a price over $.20. Therefore, there will be fewer miles given out for the same tickets. Therefore, from the viewpoint of passengers, there's more losing than winning.

This is a value for "wrong" with which I am not previously acquainted.

sethb

Yet it's precisely such a world in which I checked Orbitz and discovered that flights on a different carrier were cheaper and more convenient than on DL. So I thought about it, and decided that the benefits of DL's FF program (both on the chances of upgrades on those flights and the MQMs earned toward future status) were worth paying the extra money and inconvenience for, so I purchased DL tickets.

I won't argue about whether or not my existence is ludicrous.

gooselee

Not *every* corporate travel policy, but most.

I once worked for a place where if the Amex engine found a flight option that was $0.01 cheaper, you had to get a multi-layered pre-approval to book a more expensive one, even if the cheaper one added two connections and 8 hours of travel time. It was a very basic and idiotic policy - you must book the cheapest option that is returned by your search results (which could be no narrower than a 4-hour departure window). Period.

Zeeb

Good point. I meant to type "every policy I've run in to" there. Our current policy is a max of $100 more than the cheapest option for domestic. I don't know what it is for international because all my travel is domestic so I've never found out.

gooselee

Yeah, I figured as much. I would probably agree that "every reasonable policy" allows some leeway.

But back on topic, I haven't read through all of this thread yet, but when I saw the AA news come out a few days ago, it definitely had me chuckling at all the folks who said they were status matching over to AA after the DL changes.

Personally, I'm one of the guys who will net benefit from the new DL system (pending, of course, what the new award availability looks like), and as an ATL-captive, schedule and product are going to keep me in their court anytime their fares are less than 1.5x their competition.