Actually this argument works in the reverse of this. What many people were saying is for all the flyers Delta loses over this, they will still have no trouble filling front of the plane seats, which is where the money is. Ask Sebby made this same argument in his first video on this topic. I usually find his analysis on point but this time I think he missed the mark. Although the point is correct the up front seats are more profitable than seats in the back, the same is NOT true for credit card spend. As you say, everybody's dollar spent is exactly the same dollar to Delta. And the problem with thse arguments is that Delta removed the incentive to spend on the cards for nearly all tiers of traveler.

And dollars on credit cards is the lion's share of Delta's profit.

The way they structured their program, the VAST majority of people have lost any incentive to spend big on their cards (one of the biggest incentives was to get an MDM waiver which is now gone - that was why I personally spent $30K on my Reserve card this year). The Delta Platinum card has turned into garbage - no lounge access at any price, and no incentive to spend if you have no hope of getting to the next tier of status anyway - hence, what's the point of that card? It serves no purpose, there's no value proposition for most people, especially with a 20:1 $ to MDM ratio. On the Reserve card it's the same thing: if the next tier of status is unreachable AND SkyClub access is gone, what's the point of having or spending on the card?

Spending tons on the card far beyond the MDM waivers and MQM boosts also makes no sense, because of the massive opportunity cost loss, because of the huge numbers you have to spend to get to the next status level, it's just not logical to do this anymore, especially without the MQM boosts and MDM waivers. Also: Delta now sells most of the first class seats on most longer routes so your chances of getting upgraded are zero even if the elite ranks are thinned.

People who regularly buy D1 don't really need status anyway, for the most part. GUCs are getting harder and harder to use and the customer service reps are clueless, from what I read. So even that perk has been seriously devalued.

There is only one small group of people who still have an incentive to spend on the Reserve: small business owners who have a couple million to funnel through the cards and don't mind diverting 15% of that spend to the card. But that is a VERY narrow demographic. For larger companies this is impractical for the most part. Employees putting even $75K on the card for lounge access are making a very wasteful mistake - maybe some will, but it seems unlikely it will be many,

The wide swath of people who have little or no incentive to spend in the new program vastly outweigh the tiny numbers of people who will up their spend to $75K (an absurd waste of spend) or $250K or whatever, to get status on an airline that has been steadily going downhill for years, but we haven't noticed it. And ALL the dollars lost by ALL the people who don't have a reason to spend anymore are equally weighted with the few people who still will, or might up their spend a bit.

That seems totally obvious to me and a lot of people. It's amazing Delta didn't see it. That's why I think this is a matter of groupthink - too many executives breathing their own fumes and not enough people saying hey, I think this is a bad idea. Yes men tend to proliferate after a while. That's not the way to build an effective team, and the blame lies at the foot of Ed. He must have driven out the people who had contrary views.