Originally Posted by
ijgordon
Without the fee people would be more likely to book the cheaper flight that departs at an odd hour and then try to SDC to a more desirable one.
Originally Posted by
Antarius
Possibly, however you can still do that today.
Given the high load factors across the industry and UA and DL allow this AND manage to get yield premiums over AA, I'm not convinced that this is that big of an issue.
Originally Posted by
xliioper
As noted, DL requires original booking class inventory unless you have a paid C+ or FC fare. In practice, this significantly limits SDC availability when on cheaper Main fares.
UA also requires same fare class (even in FC), and they don’t level out fare buckets close to departure to the same extent that they used to, so it’s not unusual for SDC to be sparse or unavailable if booked in the lower Y/J fare classes.
I do like that UA treats the “D” in SDC as an actual day (+/- 24 hr) as opposed to calendar day.