Originally Posted by
Often1
If DL refunded non-refundable tickets, who in their right mind woul purchase refundable fares. Slitting your own throat.
DL doesn't really pay out that many VDB's on a % basis and counts on these throwaways. If they get caught once in a while, it's still worth it compared to losing the lucrative non-discounted fares.
I don't think the OP is saying that they should get rid of non-refundable fares per se, but rather a token amount might be enough to solicit more people to willingly cancel a ticket in advance if they're plans change, rather than just no-showing for the flight or playing the "lottery" of waiting until right before the flight and hoping for a weather or MX issue but sort of figuring it's a throw-away ticket.
On some flights that are oversold, or where they could potentially sell a Y/B/M ticket if they knew 24-36 hours out that your V/X ticket is just going to otherwise go out empty there is some potential value to advance notice. I know my business commute route they don't oversell allllll that often, but they do sell tickets <24 hours before the flights; having more availability to sell last minute there has some major revenue opportunities for DL.