<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Points Scrounger:
I seem to recall that previously I-class was excluded from Biz bonuses. With the new revenue push emphasis on punishing LU'sers, I guess Delta is being more generous on the upper end.
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I flew I class CDG-JFK (9/10/01) and got the then-25% bonus. You now get 50% miles bonus and you earn 200% MQMs.
I class is basically a promotional BE fare. It is generally non-refundable (with a key exception noted below) and changable for a $150 fee so long as I is available on the flight you want to change to.
From time to time, DL will offer big promotions on their website for I fares even out of JFK/ATL/CVG. It's usually between $1,500 and $2,000 R/T to most destinations in Europe. DL SMS told me they only offer these fares on DL metal. They seem to offer these promotions for just a few days, and usually for periods where there's not a lot of business travel (between Christmas and New Years, last two weeks in August, things like that).
(BA usually offers excellent deals on Concorde during the Christmas-New Years week, too.)
If you can get these deals, have reasonably firm travel dates, it's definitely the way to go. I've found they're relatively easy to change - you do have to pay the fee - b/c so few people are ticketed in this class. If you look on Galileo, you'll usually see "I7" as availability.
The exception I noted about above relates to refundability. If you get a doctor's note (exactly what it needs to say is subject to intepretation by the DL agent who deals with it) that says you couldn't fly, DL will refund your purchase price with no fees. This applies to any non-ref Int'l ticket (BE or Coach). I did this once (for a legit reason).