Originally Posted by
MikeNYC1
Yes, that's how it worked for years and years, until this recent change. No more. I've had colleagues in both the news side (photographer for Reuters) and the commercial filmmaking side be denied media rate in the past two weeks as they hadn't been pre-approved 72h in advance.
The old policy was in place as recently as September 28th (from the Internet Archive:
Special Items | Baggage : Delta Air Lines). It's a bit unreasonable to change longstanding policy with less than two weeks notice (Oct 8 activation date), and with no formal notice to anyone other than an obscure policy change buried on the website.
Were their tickets bought more than 72hrs out? I was on phone booking a trip just now, I just asked DL DM agent to find out policy for last minute tickets. She called and was told there's supposed to be an exception granted for tickets bought last minute. She stated the policy is only supposed to apply if tickets were bought more than 3 days in advance.
She also pointed out any tickets bought before the change in policy are still subject to old policy. Airline can't change bag policy for previously purchased tickets.
As usual you'll get airport agents that dont understand this.