rasmcasm

has anyone posted on the NY Times or Wall Street Journal's blogs or Facebook pages?

aubreyfromwheaton

spirit's award change policy:

Changes to Award Tickets
Customers may modify or cancel a portion of their award reservation for a $110 fee per customer, in addition to any additional mileage required for your new itinerary.
If you need to make a change to an award reservation, you may modify or cancel your flight up until the departure time of your flight. These changes include, but are not limited to, changing the origin, destination, stopover city, flight or class of service.
If you need to cancel an award reservation, you must cancel prior to the departure of the first flight on your itinerary. Once travel has started on an award reservation, the award is considered used and may not be canceled. Mileage used for the award reservation will be returned to your account once a valid award cancellation is processed.

RealHJ

^ You have really read Dullta's mind here well! Well said, that is exactly what DL means here, I am sure.

bocastephen

I'm working this up through the parent travel agency for my company, who does 1B in air revenue a year - and who just signed a closer-working arrangement with DL. It will be escalated to the sales person working our account....I was apparently the first person to spot it (thank you Flyertalk) and it's going to get escalated.

It will definitely impact my business - no way is anyone going to book a YBM fare voluntarily and use miles if there is even a slight chance their plans change at the last minute, which is something that affects most of my clients.

They'll either book lower fares and do the change fee, or if they want to upgrade or sit upfront, they'll go to UA or AA...or a foreign ST carrier they can redeem upgrades on.

This is nothing but a ridiculous policy aimed at stripping the SM outstanding balance from Delta's books, which sits as a liability and a large one given the number of miles they hand out through various channels.

The award ticket change doesn't impact the TA business, but this upgrade award change is a big problem for us.

This sort of policy smacks of Mullin and Vicki Escarra - did they sneak back in when we weren't looking?

NCommander

I'm so happy I managed to liquidate my SkyMiles account down to 5000 miles with all the 'enhancements' Delta has made recently. If for some reason I get stuck on it again, I'll credit to AS.

DL has a good product, great route network, and good staff.

It has horrible management, one of the worst NA frequent flier programs, an insane upgrade policy (YBM, really?), useless PMUs, and award availability. I thought the announcement with policy changes coming to FT (i.e., no refund on miles post travel date) that DL might start a new leaf, but its been proven this is wrong.

I really hope that you enjoy pissing off your FFs, as I already took my 7-10k of travel a year to UA, and while I'm a small fry as far as these things go, a LOT of other people look like they'll be jumping ship.

yohanson

http://travel.usatoday.com/alliance/...rture/414428/1

n301dp

So that big national ad campaign with Donald Southerland was just fluff? Instead of paying someone to produce a new ad, you could have re-used his old material that would have, in essence, meant the same thing:



The decision was not the right one, and I think that deep down you know it. Many of the DL employees I know agree with most everyone's sentiments here. What is the ulterior motive of this move?

mooper

I'm certain that Delta's last-minute availability is quite good compared to, say four months in advance. I'm not so sure that a lot of availability is released at 72 hours specifically. I'm not suggesting it isn't, but I haven't seen evidence that it is. If there's nothing solid to suggest this, then why would you presume that banning sub-72-hour changes would result in many lost opportunities to reduce required mileage to 25K? For the million+ DL miles I book annually (most being domestic), it seems that when low opens up last minute, it's usually in the month leading up to the travel, not the last three days in particular.

That aside, before concluding that there's a net loss here for people who change awards within 72 hours, you *must* first factor in how much you'll gain via the extra inventory available to book for the first time within 72 hours. For someone who has a pattern of booking a couple weeks in advance and then changing within 72 hours but rarely making an original award reservation (i.e., the first time, not a change to one) within that window, this would be seen as a loss. However, for someone like me who also makes last-minute award reservations within 72 hours - not *just* changes them - I'd first want to see how much better off I am in that respect before concluding this is a bad change for me.

Logic over emotion - no?

rylan

I am actively directing business travel at work away from Delta now.

avidflyer

Nice! ^^^^^

Plenty more of these coming. I don't think the folks at Delta Really know how bad this one is coming off.

Vuelos

They did, but it didn't work with Deltamatic so it was dumped....

Vuelos

SkyMilesInsider and his team had to have had notice iin advance to get in front of this. They didn't. They posted hours after this was implemented (DM desk says that it was effective 12:01 am EST yesterday)... if the res agents knew, why didn't SkyMilesInsider & company?

mtkeller

Glad that everyone took Michelle to task for the absolutely illogical statement about preventing changes within 72 hours ensuring award seats don't go out empty. I cannot fathom how DL thinks that they can spew such nonsense here on FT. Maybe on their blog, which they promote through social media and is overrun with kettles. Here on FT, we know the reality of things.

As the idiocy of this situation sinks in, I'm evaluating where I want to bank my remaining SkyTeam flights and whether to pursue *A or OW. Probably will depend on where I'm moving next summer, so I'm thinking that I'll continue crediting my AF and DL flights to DL. (The AF flights pretty much have to go to DL, since they don't earn with AS and earn minimally with FB. I could credit the DL fights to AS, but the odds of me winding up in AS territory aren't so good.) I guess I just have to hope I don't wind up in a market that's a true DL monopoly, as I'm fed up with this dishonesty and strange definition of loyalty.

belle3388

+ 1

As a DM, MM.

jdrtravel

Dear Michelle,

I find your tone condescending and unprofessional. You must have been spending time with your ATL gate agents.

Posting this message was a difficult decision, but it was the right one.