jaloola

DL offers complimentary Economy Comfort and Preferred Seats to passengers in Y, B, or M. To clarify, it does not offer complimentary Economy Comfort or Preferred Seats on the connecting flight of a through First/Business ticket with no First/Business Cabin by definition. Rather, if you are booked on a First/Business ticket with a First/Business fare basis (F, P, A, G, J, C, D, I, or Z), you will book into Y on the segment(s) in question and thus qualify for complimentary Economy Comfort or Preferred Seats.

However, the majority of discounted First/Business fares offered by DL are UP fares, an Economy fare with an instant upgrade at the time of purchase to First/Business. If you are booked on a First/Business ticket with an UP fare basis (Y, B, M, S, H, Q, K, L, U, T, X, V), you will book into the corresponding Economy fare class on the segment(s) in question and only qualify for complimentary Economy Comfort or Preferred Seats when on a Y, B, or M fare basis. The same concept applies to AA, but only when on a Y fare basis.

This is also why when you book an UP fare on AA or DL, who both offer complimentary Main Cabin Extra/Economy Comfort and Preferred Seats to full fare customers, and a segment either does not have seats available in First/Business Class or, in the case of B6, there is no First/Business Class Cabin available, you would be booked on that segment into the corresponding Economy fare class of the UP fare rather than in Y as with UA, who does not offer complimentary Economy Plus or Preferred Seats to full fare customers.

In the eight domestic markets that B6 has currently loaded through Mint fares, all of them are on par in terms of pricing with UP First/Business fares and not actual First/Business Fares of the legacies. Yet AA and UA will not allow routings through JFK in First/Business on a through ticket, requiring separate fares from ***-JFK and from JFK-LAX/SFO, and DL will allow routings through JFK in First/Business on a through ticket only with a $200 surcharge over their UP First/Business fares on any given day. The lowest First/Business ticket with a routing through JFK on DL that qualifies for complimentary Economy Comfort or Preferred Seats is $900.

Furthermore, even though the through Mint fares are all loaded with a Mint fare basis (J, C, D, I), they book into a wide range of Core fare bases (Y, E, K, H, T, Q, B, L, V, R, W, M, Z, O, U, S, P) on the connecting flight with no Mint cabin. With the lowest fares booking into Z, it leads me to believe that they are B6's version of UP fares. As a result, while I agree that it would be nice to have complimentary EMS on the connecting flight of a Mint ticket, it is unfortunately not something I see happening in the near future.