Originally Posted by GrayAnderson

Which elite benefits are worthless, though, which would be enhanced by this? Upgrades? The flood of Plats/Diamonds is a function of the spillover from the pandemic and could/should have been resolved through a one-off unwinding. But even then, is it better for someone to be at the back end of a long upgrade list or just not on the list when DL has decided to go the FCM route? It's not like you've got 16 F seats available for an upgrade on a 757 with 24 F these days. I feel like it would make more sense to just strip advertising upgrade rights from FO (perhaps while reserving the right to bump folks up if the upgrade list somehow exhausts) at that point.

I'd also point out that DL has, if anything, made it harder to pay for certain perks (e.g. lounge access - no day passes are available under the overhaul, even via the Plat card). If the DL Reserve cost wasn't enough for them, I'd rather they just come out and hike the fee (say, to $995) or roll out a new top-tier card (we speculated on this earlier this year, actually) that we could choose to switch to than going through the horse-hockey of requiring spend on the card.