bubbashow

j_mee....DON'T hit these folks with the realities of business and that sometimes time matters more than anything. They are more-interested in having a J on their boarding pass than recognizing a quality product or the convenience of time.

bubbashow

nypd....they are that thick-headed. The post things on a blog site in hopes that some DL lurker is going to change policy for them. Dl has covered this in great detail for years. They would rather not fill the cabin and get top dollar for it (again, NOT that different when you compare prices as you did) than fill it with upgrades. They won't be happy until BE is ruined like domestic F. They can sit there starry-eyed looking at their J boarding pass being tossed rubbish for food, and sh*t for service. I flew domestic F today MIA-DTW....cabin was full of freaking animals. That is what J will be if DL opens it up.

5khours

+1. Well said. Not only are they irresponsible with their employer's money, they drive up fares and make things worse for the rest of us.

5khours

What a total red herring. If I need to make a schedule change, I can throw away my W fare on UA, buy an new ticket and I'm still better off than if I had bought an M fare on DL. It's pretty obvious who's flying on OPM.

bubbashow

Then in some cases, you will by flying another airline or sitting in coach. That's the way the company and the program work in some examples. Deal with it, DL sure has.

mtkeller

It appears that DL.dumb is living up to its name here. The info that comes up during booking says 757-200, but the seat maps are the 76W. When you go to final price and click the flight number, it comes up as 76W for the equipment. I'm wondering if the equipment info doesn't default to 757-200 when the equipment type isn't know by the piece of code that's generating a full name for the flight selection screen.

j_mee

Good for you but apparently my company doesn't have the time to deal with booking, cancelling and rebooking tickets . I already mentioned earlier that I don't pay for my tickets. But don't hate if my company mandates refundable tickets and will book business class tickets if that is all is left.

I don't even purchase my tickets, just give the dates/destination and it is booked.

mbarreto

I hope you're not referring to me here

And I think you're forgetting about people who fly J as per company policy. Thankfully, my company allows international travel on J for us executives. I do agree with you that if paying for a Y ticket, I couldn't care less about upgradeability, that's the employees problem, whereas mine indeed is watching out for the shareholders best interest.

DL J isn't priced much differently than UA J. Some people prefer one product over the other. I try to stick with DL as long as the price difference is minimal.

avidflyer

Then it is clear why you prefer DL. I have no problem with that or even with those who use the "M" fare to get a J ticket where J is not allowed. The point I am trying to make is most VFF'ers just want a comfortable seat at a reasonable price. I actually do not care about many of the service and "dinning" issues that some do. For me, if I want "luxury" I will fly IFC on an international carrier. Getting there is my main concern and getting there rested and ready to work is important to me. I will always chose the airline that give me that ability at a reasonable price. I also have no problem with employees paying a little more for an upgradable ticket but when that is merely J in disguise then I cannot condone it IF those employees are not authorised for J. I contend the vast majority out there are not.

motytrah

I think that's atypical for most companies. They usually have preferred carrier agreements (if they are big enough companies) where all sorts of rebates more than cover fees. Most companies use a corporate travel agency. And even if it's a non-refundable ticket the exchange still gets repriced, so it's not like it's that much different for the TA. I would hypothesize that maybe if your travel is billed directly back to a client AND they have a preferred carrier agreement, they would get an even bigger rebate and no fees to deal with. It would be kind of unethical to do to the customer, but certainly not illegal. But that's just my speculation.

Be that as it may, as someone that hasn't been in the Y cabin international in over a decade I will depart from some of this shareholder value nonsense other folks have said. I have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. I fly J or Above. Don't like it, don't sign my contract.

I would also say that as a MSP based flyer we don't exactly see the nicer planes, or convenient routes anymore. And I'm under no illusion that someone if going to pick me up in a Porche or any of the other soft perks you get in JFK or ATL. Most of my international trips are usually 1-stop be DL, AA or UA/CO. The folks that are talking about product need to keep in mind because DL is not the same system wide. My experience is AA J is just as good as DL on the routes I've been flying as of late and usually cheaper.

DLPhoenix

I don't fly Delta any more, but I hold a MM status and I left Delta because the international upgrade policy did not meet my needs.

Delta made a business decision to ignore a certain market segment (people who travel a lot to international destinations for companies with restrictive travel policies). They lost some business, they got to sell some very expensive Y/B/M tickets and apparently they do not see a need to reverse the policy.

What I don't get is why are posters here so emotional about this?
And where do people get the "facts" they post here?

Happy Travels
DLP

BahstunDLPT

I would agree with this. I am almost at MM status and I continue to fly even though my company doesn't have an ideal business travel policy. I also fly enough domestically across the US to where being DM is very helpful.

I'll give the most peculiar example of how this system needs further work. This week I am on an BOS-NGO-BOS trip. On the way out, the flight had 48 empty BE seats and I did not get an upgrade as expected traveling Coach. Today, I get to NGO and find out I've been upgraded, most likely, because Coach is full. So, for the price of my $1300 ticket, I got half an upgrade. Great deal for my company, special circumstance nets me BE going home. However, if Delta had an upgrade policy conducive to BE upgrades, my company would pay $2500-3000 for the ticket, I would have been upgraded twice and Delta would have collected more revenue. This is of course one side of the coin, and I'm sure Delta has run enough macros to figure out their margin on this relative to Coach Y sales to non medallions and sales to YBM or BE. One thing Delta should do, if they continue to operate the BE upgrades as YBM - make them unlimited and automatic within 24 hours if you book that fare class. I think they will increase revenue and margin further. As a business, Delta has to operate on maximizing gross margin or they will be cutting other features we like.

I can see both sides of the argument, but at the end of the day, Delta wins on their current policy or they wouldn't operate it in this manner.

Christefan

Good for you, but your company's travel manager should be fired. Since refundable tickets are less than half of M and up fares, even if you have to cancel the trip on DL, you can reuse the value less the $250 change fee which is still cheaper than buying M and up fares....

ijgordon

I think people aren't giving enough weighting to what I think is a very important market segment. The business traveler who flies Paid J for business but then wants to use the SWUs to take the family overseas in business class. Skymiles is a terrible program for these folks. AA is the best. UA is so-so (only 6 SWUs and possible fare premiums).

k2

^^ Ding ding ding!!! There was a guy from AA, worried about the potential bankruptcy, who posted here a few weeks ago asking about Skymiles along exactly these lines. It didn't take him long to figure out this was not the program for him.