Originally Posted by
n7371f
Haha you think! Your upgrade percentages won't improve. Just watch. Delta will continue to further push paid F and part of their thinking is a percentage of displaced DM's will end up paying with cash or miles for many more upgrades going forward vs hoping for upgrade today.
Exactly, I posted earlier about the husband of someone in my office who will drop to PM in 19 due to this change and he is planning on buying FC seats on long hauls now which will take one seat out of the upgrade inventory on those flights.
If I decide to drop to PM in 19 I'll be doing the same thing. I have a ton of RDM's and will just start using those to do PWM for the FC price difference or if there are upgradeable seats on long hauls for 12,500 miles to upgrade I'll just burn my RDM's that way. I'm sure a lot of people dropping to PM have RDM's to burn and will just start buying first class.
Since I have plenty of rollover MQMs and won't have to worry about MQM's anymore if I drop to PM (and who knows if/when Delta will eliminate or limit rollover) I may as well start burning my RDM's on award travel as well and a lot of times on long hauls first isn't much more than coach milewise.
Also with the premium economy product coming out on some international planes the hub captives will see less upgrades on domestic because the people buying those tickets will be sitting up front on the domestic connection.
I really don't care about the short haul trips if I am in coach