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Old Sep 16, 2023 | 5:18 am
  #220  
GrayAnderson
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Originally Posted by ElmhurstNick
I feel like Delta wants to just get rid of SM/GM and base PM/DM mostly on how many F/J tickets (excluding cheaper Z domestic trips) you buy a long with credit card spend. They look at Flying Blue and Virgin and think "we don't want to reward flying in lower cabins or fare buckets at all. That just takes up resources."
This has me wondering...what's the yield-per-space on the planes in F vs W vs Y? I wonder because (this may sound a bit counter-intuitive) if they're selling 3/4 of F space on a regular basis (and this is including both smaller destinations with very little demand for F as well as awkward-hour flights that don't sell much, either) and space is constrained, if the yields in F are ahead of Y, whether we might not see some enlargement of F on some planes? My thinking is that if it might be a little bit tricky to push fares up in Y, it might be easier to shrink Y (if they're selling most/all of F as-is) and reduce the number of "cheap seats" being sold, and expand F/W if the latter can yield more on a per-space basis.

[Note: I do not expect this to be done with an eye towards there being more UG space as such; depending on relative yields it might just make more sense to add premium cabin capacity on some of the larger narrow-body planes if they can sell most/all of the space on a regular basis as-is.]
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