DTW to MSP ?!?!?!? :eek:

What are they thinking?:td:

A possible insight into how well FCM is working?
 

Has anyone looked into this website sufficiently to have a perspective on it?

http://flightaware.com/insight/airline/KFLL/KATL/DAL

Picking some routes, and looking at the asserted income derived from FC tickets and the median (granted, not mean) FC ticket price, shows routes where the data would indicate that an average of less than one FC seat is sold per flight.

JFK to LAX shows less than two purchased FC seats for non-stops.

Actually, I find this hard to believe.

Perhaps they are classifying A and P fares as coach fares (despite DL management's blatantly fallacious marketing otherwise).

Also, I do note that they are only reported unrestricted fares.

Thoughts?

Had a GA explain this to me once. On some routes, on some days, where it is later in the day, they don't UG prior to the 3 hr airport-control window because there's a history of flights earlier in the day being delayed/canceled.

Not UG'ing folks until the final stage makes it easier to reroute passengers inconvenienced earlier in the day. Especially true of hub-hub routes where connections are important (e.g., PAX flying overseas).

I don't know how true it is, but it does make sense in some ways.

On Sunday, I was flying CMH-ATL on a MD88 with 16 F Seats.

Only 3 seats were released into V. I did not clear until the gate, where I was number one. But do they really think they will sell 13 F seats on a route like that???

They will certainly try. A couple of weeks ago flying domestic out of JFK they (meaning the gate agents) offered F to anyone (not just elites) with an MBY fare for $75. This was announced in the gate area well before they cleared the upgrade list.

Did the UG elite list clear before they cleared the cash upgrades?

I can't say for sure, I didn't need to watch it closely because I was already up front, connecting on a J itinerary - but I assume, based on timing, that the paid UGs went through before medallions. The announcement was made a solid 30 minutes before boarding. Also, this was an evening flight between 2 hubs on an MD-90 (JFK-DTW) so you have to think there were more medallions than open seats up front. I could be wrong.

Thats odd... the gate upgrades are supposed to be eligible for YBMQHK tickets. At $75 it would have to be a short route also... and they are supposed to be processed after all medallions requesting an upgrade clear.

An announcement that SDS upgrades are being offered does not mean that the GA has not already allocated enough FC seats for any remaining medallions on the ASL.

Has the ATL-PHX Route been FCM'd? I'm flying on 11/9 (DL1015) and it doesn't look like much in the V inventory opened up for any of Friday's ATL-PHX flights. I just tried to do a dummy booking and FC (A) is $56 more then Y (Q).

You can look back at my posts and see I'm not a big FCM complaint guy, and I've always argued that many of the examples aren't (in my opinion) instances of FCM.

But I did run into one today, and they actually got me to bite. In December I'll be flying SFO-BNA-SFO. Round trip in U/T was a cheap $289 (only 5.5 cpm :cool:). DL operates a 763 with BizElite seats on the flight I was planning on taking to ATL en route to BNA, which I definitely wanted to be in.

After looking at flight availability for the past two weeks on this mid-week flight, I figured my UG chances as a PM were low, as there were only a handful of seats left in J on day of departure. So my options were:

1. Book lowest econ for $289 round trip and probably sit in Y on the way out.
2. Book a K fare outbound and T fare return and use a SWU for $375 plus the SWU. No upgrade inventory but I'd be at the top of the list and probably get the upgrade.
3. Book a discounted Biz outbound and T fare return for $515, plus I'll get the 50% MQM and RDM. Would have the guaranteed seat in business, and save the SWU.

I figure I'll probably get upgraded on the return, and if not it's not that big of a deal. I had planned on going the SWU route, but after seeing it was only $140 more to book into business/first, save the SWU, and get the MQM/RDM boost it made total sense for me.

So in this case, I'm booking 6 weeks out and DL convinced me (via their pricing) to book discounted Biz on my outbound instead of discounted Y.

FLYPWM I've flown to ATL to PHX to visit family multiple times on this flight the past couple of years on T,U, L fares and as far as I can remember always upgraded within upgrade window. There wasn't a problem as a Platinum either.

I've flown it as well and never had a problem at the window either until now. I'm betting DL 1015, 1115 and 1915 are all V=0 on 11/9

T is 161.86
KUP 332.1

Why would you buy Y though when you can buy B/M?