Originally Posted by
jamesteroh
The thing that REALLY irritates me with FCM is that Delta is giving them a lot of SDC flexibility on those cheap tickets while they made it a lot harder for their most loyal customers to SDC on an economy ticket that is sometimes purchased for close to the same rate or even higher than a G fare. (and I'll be the first to admit that I have done a couple FCM's lately just so I could be assured the flexibility of changing the flight time where I would have stuck with the economy fare otherwise so I guess it's working as far as selling more FCM tickets)
But if you can't SDC to a new route you have to consider again that the poster was flying CLT-LGA, a route with only two flights a day, it's not a more heavily traveled route with a connection in Atlanta. As I mentioned in my last post, if this offer was only available because the poster booked CLT-LGA and would not have been available if the poster had booked CLT-ATL-LGA as an alternative, the implications here are relatively limited.
I would pay $50 more for a round-trip first class fare (out of my own pocket on business travel or personal travel) on any trip for the additional MQM and RDM, avoidance of the upgrade lottery, better choice of seats than winning the upgrade lottery and the SDC flexibility (even if limited). A couple weeks ago I was glad I had paid $100 more (10,000 miles with PWM actually) for an FCM fare on a one-way LIT-ATL-MCI, I was able to SDC onto flights that got me home two hours earlier when my meeting finished early.