Originally Posted by
WestSideBilly
Not sure I follow. Mostly empty may have been a poor word choice, somewhat empty more accurate. The tcon flights next week (just outside the DM upgrade window) have a fair number of empty seats. If 6 people have bought BE on 12/18 442, are 20 more people going to buy it next year because they no longer get upgrades? If your corporate policy doesn't allow you to buy domestic BE/F, seems like DL just fell to last place for tcon business guys. So you lose the last minute Y fare and gain a few gallons of fuel from having an empty seat up front? Or a VDB voucher since Y is oversold? Or you give it to a nonrev and lose the Y fare? Kettles aren't paying $3000 to fly up front, so who is going to appear to buy those tickets? The corporate contracts that DO pay to fly up front are already in hand and aren't being crowded out, so what's the gain here?
Alienating the FFers in a competitive market like NYC seems like a net loss to me.
And if someone's employer/clients are generous to pay for someone to sit up front on a JFK/LAX flight, why not just take American on that route. If your employer/client will pay may as well fly American and have a real first class experience than fly business on Delta.
Being a CPA, I can tell you most clients/employers aren't going to pay for first class domestic tickets for their weekly flyers. If I turned in a bill to pay for a $6K airfare for JFK/LAX my clients would go through the roof and if a vendor was flying to us and they insisted on flying their employees on that kind of airfare, I would find a cheaper vendor.