Originally Posted by
ethernal
Yep.. I do wonder when Delta will decide to close that loophole. They can be quite generous for discount J fares, especially with the TPAC market glut.
I think it will have a decent shelf life. Yes, there are discount fares that act as a loophole, but there are also plenty of other fares where you still get screwed pretty badly. The main issue is that "zeroing out" those flights would hurt some decent-level elites who
have to fly on partners to get somewhere (either to avoid painful routings or because DL just doesn't go somewhere) and
not giving some sort of credit to them would act as a fairly aggressive soft push for those passengers to look at the competition (with all of its issues). Also, with those credits somewhat fixed as a function of distance it is quite possible to envision inflation slowly closing the loophole for Delta.
Ultimately, DL would need access to faring information in order to handle credits like this accordingly. I could see this happening with some of their equity partners, but not really with anyone else.