The ignore list really helps keep f-tards like him from ruining a perfectly good Bombay and Sapphire...

Cheers.

Personally, I am hesitant to jump ship, especially since I live in ATL. I often see convenient routings to destinations on other airlines, but not any one airline. Also, FCM doesn't really impact me as an ATL-based GM. All of my upgrade requests go to the gate, where I am usually more than a third of the plane's capacity down the UG list.

My gripe with FCM is that Delta isn't owning up to it. Us FTers know what is going on, but all the poor kettles signing up for DL AmEx cards to get FO status are (rightly so) believing the BS that DL is feeding them about upgrades. It is wrong to sell your loyalty program and credit cards on the basis of complementary upgrades, proclaimed to be abundantly available and ever increasing.

Delta's left hand (marketing) tells customers one thing, while Delta's right hand (RM) b*tch-slaps them for believing the marketing hype (aka lies).

Am I happy about supporting a company that is doing something I believe is genuinely unethical? No. But I do it all the time out of necessity, and Delta is no exception.

OFTEN DL sells an F seat for $50 over the cheapest available Y seat. I don't care what T would have cost if there aren't any T tickets available.

Cruze versus FCM
 

You guys have the analogy wrong. What if GM were Delta?

They'd sell a Cruze LS to captive business customers for anywhere between the base price and the full LTZ trim price. Captive business customers would be prohibited from purchasing a Cadillac.

One out of 5 times they'd give a base Cadillac to captive business customers for no additional cost. They'd offer to sell the base Caddy to customers off the street for the a slight reduction off the loaded Cruze price.

You guys are loyal to Delta, you are not going anywhere.

BTW I think the Cruze is a fine vehicle :D

I have not cleared for my flight tomorrow and I noted the P fare popped up in the last day or 2 and it is a hair over $50 over the current M fare. I called and was told I could not pay the extra $50 to change it.. something about a fare and ticket change deal???. I will add that I would not do it out of principle at this point, but wonder what response I would get if I called and talked to 10 different folks?

Does the Marketing Department know about this???;)

Left hand, meet right hand. <smack!>

(The smack you heard was the sound of RM b*tch-slapping it's own Marketing Department... It's all downhill from here folks!)

Well, believe it or not, I do work and don't have time to hang on here all the time.

OFTEN DL sells an F seat for $50 over the cheapest available Y seat. I don't care what T would have cost if there aren't any T tickets available.

Then keep missing the forest for the trees. There is a HUGE difference between a T fare and an M fare. If you can't see that, I can't cure what you have. So, let the Diamonds buy T, don't sell anything below full F for the front cabin and save it all for free upgrades?

Idiocy.

BTW - I was reached out to by DL today. I guess they do monitor these forums and our spending. =)

You make plenty of posts, yet you keep ignoring ones that call out your untruths...

Nobody would expect your strawman to be anything but.

Tickets that can't be bought don't exist.

DL is selling an F seat for $50 over the cheapest available Y seat (and not even permitting good customers to upgrade for that price). Those are facts. Whether or not somebody else, 3 months ago, paid a different amount is completely irrelevant ancient history.

If DL charged its previous usual $1000 more for the F seat over the cheapest Y, it would probably now sell the Y and lose $50 in revenue. (If 5% of the time the customer bought the F anyway, it would break even in revenue for that seat.) Meanwhile, when DL finally loses my loyalty due to not being loyal to me, that will cost it somewhere over $10K/year in revenue (plus whatever it gets from Amex for my spend on my DL Amex).

DL is not valuing loyalty change in its P&L, so it looks very profitable while eating the loyalty it purchased in years past. I'm sure there are executives there who plan to leave before this catches up with DL.

I can see (in warped logic) why DL won't let you do this. It would appear that you're attempting to convert an M fared ticket to an H-UP fared ticket (the bucket for most P fares). If you put it that way to them ("I'd like to exchange this M fare for this more expensive H fare"), I suspect the answer will always be "no".

So there appears to be a pattern (this would be easier with a graph!):

DL assigns buckets and prices for a route. As time passes and the lower buckets sell out, the higher buckets take over. Then, a period of time before departure (2-3 days, 1 week, etc?), DL opens up the -UP buckets (either H-UP or Q-UP), creating P/A fares. This results in customers who could have had P/A for less then their past purchase, yet only a few dollars more then the current purchase. It's a game of chicken, and DL is driving an 18-wheeler, while we're driving a Smart car.

So it appears that DL has moved one lever at the end of the purchase cycle (the last few days, opening up -UPs, to generate cash-flow from unoccupied F-cabin seats), and they are just now finding out how this effects the entire machine (they'll probably admit they didn't know how this would effect everything, yet had to find out).

What appears to be happening is that DL (or all airlines?) are creating this small window of oppurtunity (right before departure) for more cash-flow for themselves for unsold and/or unoccupied seats, while the pax are entering a period of use-it-or-loose it. They're just trying to lock people in, then grab as much as they can from the unoccupied seats. It matches the award ticket redemption penalties... for award tickets at a certain point you fly-or-loose yet in that window there's added availability (new Lows), and for a rev ticket at a certain point you fly-or-loose yet in that window there's added availability (in P/A).

First, DL wanted to bring some predictability to pre-departure sales (and flat-out came out and said it during the 72hr award fiasco, too many redeposits, resulting in too many un-filled seats, and lost cash-flow or mileage-redemption opportunity). Now it appears they believe they have that predictability, and are trying to maximize opportunity in that last window of sales.

If the fog is starting to lift, and if this is how things are, the question is... how will the pax react, at the strategic (not FT) level?

imo, this is going to be a potential net-rev loss for DL, and here's why... it's all about hope. A lot of people have been purchasing higher-and-higher buckets, doing MRs, acquiring MQMs any way they can, to maintain the hope of getting an upgrade (and by extension with a higher status, perceived better customer service). DL is taking away that hope, by locking people in to their seats, then selling off the remainder (specifically the F cabin) at current-market+10%. DL wants the cash-flow, and has the potential of upsetting the loyalty customers in the process. And when you take away that hope... the deliberate purchasing of higher buckets, and MRs, and credit-card offers, are going to go away, and everyone just buys the lowest fare (for the cabin they want to travel in).

Yet my unsolicited comment to DL... you can't get away with this strategy, unless you have an F product people are willing to pay for. Right now, you only have an F product people are willing to hope for.

+∞

I fly DL when it's not the cheapest to a) acquire additional MQMs and b) for hope of an upgrade.

Occasionally I buy up to F when the -UP fares make sense but most of the time I buy Y fares. It is indeed a bummer to see last minute folks buying up to F which have no loyalty whatsoever to DL. My loyalty has a price, of course, but I think it's pretty reasonable. DL seems to think otherwise.

If a Delta elite resides in ATL, MEM, MSP,SLC, CVG and to a lesser degree DTW where are they, as a Delta pax, going to leave to?

Southwest? ,yeah right. Delta sheeple know no other way.

Well, if by policy you must book in coach, would you rather be green with envy of those in FC, or king of the roost in Y?

Personally, I had no intention of ever flying WN, but with Delta's unethical marketing and customer devaluation, that doesn't seem like such a bad idea. I certainly no longer feel loyal to Delta. I just use their services out of convenience, just like they use me for my money.

I am loyal to Verizon, Coke, my dry cleaner, and many other companies that I purchase products or services from frequently. In other words, I am willing to go a bit out of my way, pay a bit more, and recommend them to my friends and family. Delta used to be on this list, but no more.

A retailer I used to work for constantly reminded associates that the average lifetime customer value is $80k. Giving great service can keep a customer for life, but even one bad experience can drive them away forever and cost the company $80k. Losing $40 to match a price, or even giving store credit for a product never carried by our store at the customer's insistence was considered a small price to retain the $80k cash stream that hung in the balance.

I'm guessing DL's average lifetime customer value is much higher, even more so for medallions. I am only a GM, but would estimate that I will spend closer to a million dollars in air travel in my lifetime (not counting friends/family/colleagues who would fly with me). This once belonged exclusively to Delta... now, who knows?

And THERE is the incorrect assumption. I have loyalty to DL, and I buy up. Everyone on here assumes that EVERYONE buying the P fare is a Kettle. It simply isn't true. Many of us have lattitude in our travel budgets to buy the upgrade (especially when less than full Y).

Threads and comments like this is why airline CEO's consider elites over - entitled. I am against airlines offering super cheap upgrades to low fare coach passengers instead of upgrading an elite...but an M fare upgrading to an F fare is absolutely fair game. Those pissed off can go somewhere else to find the same thing. You can gripe all you want but your business-sense is garbage. Delta has the right and is not doing anything unethical by offering F seats for purchase. And $715 for a one way MSP-SEA is not considered a bargain that many people are going to jump on.