Originally Posted by jetsfan92588

You are not a loyal customer. You are not a "type" of loyal customer because you are not loyal at all (at least not yet - again I agree DL is trying to turn you into a loyal customer). The reason why companies need loyal customers is because at some point some other company is going to come in and try to use manipulations to steal your customers. If your customers aren't loyal, and they simply buy F fares, it's a lot easier for that other party to use manipulations to poach those customers. Loyal customers help you when you can no longer manipulate things (like decrease prices) in response to the activities of competitors. Companies still absolutely need HVCs, including those HVCs that will never be loyal to the company. I'm certainly not saying that DL should just try to get loyal customers and forget about non-loyal HVCs.

I have no idea if DL is losing money on me. I'm a DM that's flown 140k miles this year (excluding rollover) all on DL metal, all booked in economy. I've gotten upgraded to F on the vast majority of my domestic flights. I have a condo outside the US so I don't know what my MQDs would be - though my guess is I'd be right around the 20K required by year end. I have a reserve card and I put less than $1k/year on it. I complain to DL a lot (well, I don't complain a lot, but the things I complain about are important enough that I follow through with getting what I'm owed, which often means taking up a lot of time from a lot of agents).

If DL is losing money on me, with that profile, I'd think they'd be doing something wrong. There is no doubt in my mind that they make more from a HVC, but I think it's a stretch to say DL is "losing money" on anything but a small subset of DMs.