Originally Posted by
Often1
Take a look at DL's public filings for the past few years. All that matters is the steady up arrow. While the number of "elites" at each level is, of course, proprietary, neither DL nor any of the legacies has made any bones about the need to thin the herd in the post-consolidation and post-recession world.
As with everything else, this is a zero-sum game. There are winners and losers. Some call it a devaluation. Others call it a reservation of limited benefits which are now more available to the few who are true HVC's.
No different than the question of whether you wish DL would or would not hold a flight for late connecting passengers. If you are one of those passengers, the answer is pretty simple. If you are onboard enjoying a PDB and hoping to see your kids before bedtime, you can guess that answer too.
Upgrades are a zero-sum game (at least in isolation). Pretty much everything else is not, and this repeated assertion on FlyerTalk (particularly in the DL forum) drives me bonkers. If DL can attract more customers at fares that, on average, exceed their costs due to the value customers place on the frequent flyer program, in the long term they can increase capacity to meet that increased demand. Ditto for redeemable miles: if the revenue DL receives from FF miles (either paid by AmEx, partner airlines, or other partners or due to FF mile earning driving customers to pay cash for DL flights) exceeds the cost of providing the awards, giving miles or an award to me does not take one away from you in the long run. This is particularly true with dynamic award pricing.
And the holding a flight thing is also not a zero-sum game. Yes, holding a flight for one group of passengers does inconvenience another, but whether the sum is zero, positive, or negative depends on many factors.
Those who view anything in which some benefit and some lose as "zero sum" should officiate in American football, where 3 15 yard personal fouls offset one 5 yard procedural penalty on the same play. Or go on TV news, where the truth is by definition halfway in between whatever two the guests say.
The relevant statement is not to assert that everything DL does is fine because there are winners and losers and therefore the sum is zero. And saying that DL is making enormous profit doesn't necessarily mean that their frequent flyer program decisions are optimal -- even United is making record profits in this dirt-cheap-oil, constrained-capacity, constrained-competition, recovering-economy (at least in the aviation-spending top) environment. AA is making larger profits, and their changes to the FF program haven't kicked in yet.
Now, I do suspect that DL has run the numbers carefully and believes (with far more information than I have at my disposal) that the changes to their FF program do, in sum, increase their profits. But saying simply that DL is profiting and there are winners and losers, therefore the Skymiles changes are correct is lazy. In fact, the OP's question is the right one. I can't answer it.
