Originally Posted by
DLPhoenix
I don't fly Delta any more, but I hold a MM status and I left Delta because the international upgrade policy did not meet my needs.
Delta made a business decision to ignore a certain market segment (people who travel a lot to international destinations for companies with restrictive travel policies). They lost some business, they got to sell some very expensive Y/B/M tickets and apparently they do not see a need to reverse the policy.
What I don't get is why are posters here so emotional about this?
And where do people get the "facts" they post here?
Happy Travels
DLP
I would agree with this. I am almost at MM status and I continue to fly even though my company doesn't have an ideal business travel policy. I also fly enough domestically across the US to where being DM is very helpful.
I'll give the most peculiar example of how this system needs further work. This week I am on an BOS-NGO-BOS trip. On the way out, the flight had 48 empty BE seats and I did not get an upgrade as expected traveling Coach. Today, I get to NGO and find out I've been upgraded, most likely, because Coach is full. So, for the price of my $1300 ticket, I got half an upgrade. Great deal for my company, special circumstance nets me BE going home. However, if Delta had an upgrade policy conducive to BE upgrades, my company would pay $2500-3000 for the ticket, I would have been upgraded twice and Delta would have collected more revenue. This is of course one side of the coin, and I'm sure Delta has run enough macros to figure out their margin on this relative to Coach Y sales to non medallions and sales to YBM or BE. One thing Delta should do, if they continue to operate the BE upgrades as YBM - make them unlimited and automatic within 24 hours if you book that fare class. I think they will increase revenue and margin further. As a business, Delta has to operate on maximizing gross margin or they will be cutting other features we like.
I can see both sides of the argument, but at the end of the day, Delta wins on their current policy or they wouldn't operate it in this manner.