I just looked at that flight for next week. Wednesday is showing 6 complimentary upgrades (RU), Thursday has RU=8, and Friday has RU=9.

Seems like this route is typically quite empty up front and DL hands out a good deal of upgrade (in advance) to elites. On top of that, it's a 75X with 26 seats up front (one of the highest densities of F to Y of the DL fleet). It seems like they do indeed give out plenty of upgrades to elites, with many of them at the window. With that many F seats going unsold and a lot of elites getting upgrades, it does make sense for DL to cut the price on F to try to sell those seats.

Careful with that assumption about handing out elite UG's at the window. More times than not I will see a flight go from from V/RU inventory T-7 days out and then be wiped to zero on the day before PM/DM window opens.

The rest of your post is very valid but looking at RU inventory T-8 is asinine.

And one more thing that really bakes my noodle is this hypocritical FCM pricing. They want to REWARD and VALUE medallions, but they'd rather fork over $150 in profit AND give an F seat to another pax rather than rewarding the medallion member with a comp UG. And that complimentary upgrade is not so "complimentary." Look at the $$$'s i've spent over the years with delta.

Or for those of us whose employer will not let us pick F, no matter what (even if it is cheaper).

Oh well. At least my flights are short.

My take on FCM is that it's better to have no status with DL and just buy the cheapo A fares rather than play Upgrade Roulette. SkyMiles is becoming more of a sucker's game for those who think that can beat the house.

As a fallen Plat (currently Silver) I'm happy to purchase an A fare and breeze right past the supplicating DMs and PMs on their K fares hovering at the gate.

If the trip isn't long enough to splash-out for a front cabin fare, I'm perfectly content to ride in the back. It's domestic first - ain't nothing worth getting worked up over.

I think people are missing the point. Selling the FC seat at coach prices is an attempt to steal customers from competitors. Why fly United Y when you can get Delta F for the same price? That's the logic behind what they're doing. That's why you see FCM more on competitive routes like routes to FL and CA, or flights to competitor hubs (like DEN).

And this is different than AA or UA?

No. It's not.

FCM is making Delta money. Period.

I bought more F tickets last year than ever before. Why? They weren't expensive and priced close to if not at the same as coach.

I will buy F every time if fares are as cheap as the OP posted.

Gotta love FlyerTalk...the only place they complain when a FC seat is cheaper than coach.

^

Not true. Both UA and AA have good FF programs (not perfect... but good).

ab-so-lutely. +1. I would have bought the FC seat in a heartbeat.

??

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B146 Safari/8536.25)

Word :) !

I think the real answer is a lot simpler than some people think.

Delta is still charging a premium for business travelers who want the flexibility of the coach fare and is quite happy to profit from those who cannot book "first class" fares no matter what the price. If employers are too inflexible to adjust to this reality, then they will just have to accept losing money. Maybe if companies start adjusting to the new travel realities then Delta will back off on such extreme price differences.

I believe the primary goal here is to extract more revenue from leisure flyers who don't need the flexibility that a Y/B/M/F fare gives but are willing to pay a slight premium to fly First Class.

Delta is merely taking advantage of inflexible corporate travel policies. Any business looking to make money would do the same.